By IRNA,
London : British Airways (BA) has spoken out against US-imposed security checks at UK airports that are not implemented for internal American flights, saying Britain should stop ‘kowtowing’ to Washington’s demands.
‘America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do. We shouldn’t stand for that. We should say ‘we’ll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential’,’ said BA chairman Martin Broughton.
Broughton suggested the practice of forcing passengers on US-bound flights to take off their shoes and to have their laptops checked separately in security lines should be dropped, during a conference of UK airport operators in London.
There was no need to ‘kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done’, he was reported to have said by the Financial Times Wednesday in remarks that were not disputed by BA.
The criticism is believed to be the first from a major airline against US demands that have grown since the 9/11 attacks in 2001 and have become he more obsessive after the alleged attempt blow up a Northwest Airlines flight from Yemen as it was landing at Detroit airport last December.
Broughton called for some ‘completely redundant’ airport security checks to be scrapped and gained support from the chief executive of British Airport Authorities, Colin Matthews, who said there should be a ‘single, coherent process.”
‘Today’s arrangements are incremental and I think there is a case for saying let’s start from a clean sheet of paper to achieve what we want to achieve,’ Matthews said.
On Monday, Transport Minister Philip Hammond told the conference he wanted a new regulatory system – where the government concentrated on setting security outcomes that are needed.
But according to the BBC, the Department for Transport said there were no plans to change rules on checking laptops and shoes.