Source: Chicago Tribune
Author: Susanna Ray

U.S. restrictions on liquids carried aboard airliners will stay in place "for the foreseeable future" as authorities test better bomb-detection gear, the Transportation Security Administration said.

Machines reliable enough to screen 2 million passengers a day for liquid explosives "don't exist today in mass quantities," TSA spokesman Christopher White said in an interview.

That means carry-on liquids still must be in containers of 3 ounces (89 milliliters) or less, sealed inside a 1-quart (0.95-liter) plastic bag, as they have been since September. A plot in the U.K. to blow up trans-Atlantic jets with liquid explosives spurred an Aug. 10 ban on carry-on fluids, which was replaced with the current rules about a month later.

"That restriction will continue until the threat no longer exists or until we have a technology employed across the system to identify liquid explosives," White said today.

TSA Administrator Kip Hawley told the Washington Post, in comments reported today, that changes to the rules after the U.S. Labor Day holiday in September 2008 would be "a fair shot."

White said the agency doesn't have a timeline or goal for altering the restrictions, saying only that the limits would stay "for the foreseeable future."

"We have a very sustainable long-term rule in place today," White said. "We're not going to rush to deploy something that's not proven or might not work on a widely used basis."

Limitations on cabin baggage haven't damped travel demand, and U.S. airlines expect to carry a record number of passengers during the current summer season, said David Castelveter, a spokesman for the Washington-based Air Transport Association.

"The threat of terrorism, as realistic as it is, isn't scaring passengers away," Castelveter said. "They're learning to live with the restrictions."