"Airport Security Puts Lid on Open Beverages"

Tuesday, June 25, 2002

Airport Security Puts Lid on Open Beverages
The St. Petersburg Times, Fla.


Count one more inconvenience in the war against terrorism: that cup of
coffee you want to carry from the airport terminal to your plane.

Starting this week, airline passengers won't be permitted to take open
beverage containers through security checkpoints, the federal
Transportation Security Agency said Monday.

The TSA had given screeners at each airport discretion to allow
travelers to carry coffee cups and other open containers as they walked
through magnetometers, TSA spokeswoman Heather Rosenker said.

But agency officials last week ordered that anything a passenger takes
through the checkpoint must go through an X-ray machine, she said, and
open beverages that might spill will be banned.

Screeners will start enforcing the new policy at Tampa International
Airport in"a day or two,"said Louis Miller, the airport's executive
director. Unopened cans or bottles will be okay, he said, but the policy
also prohibits certain kinds of foods, like ice cream cones.

"We can't afford to have those machines be damaged,"Rosenker said."If
you go through a security checkpoint, make sure any liquid is in a
sealed container. Or you have to consume it before you go through."She
wouldn't comment on reasons for the policy change. But the TSA has
expressed concerns that a terrorist might sneak a container full of
flammable liquid or a weapon hidden in a beverage onto a plane, said
Todd Hauptli, senior vice president of legislative affairs for the
American Association of Airport Executives.

"There's been a bunch of discussion about"the Starbucks Crowd,"' he
said."The theory the TSA guys have is you'd have someone (hiding) ...
something like a knife in a cup of coffee." Screeners have tried
different ways to check. In some airports, screeners told passengers to
drink the liquids they wanted to carry onto planes.

That backfired when a 14-year-old boy traveling from Aspen, Colo., to
Pennsylvania was required to drink from a bottle of untreated stream
water he was bringing home for a high school class project. He later
became sick. "We do not require people to drink (anymore), Rosenker
said.

Mike Ibrahim, a printing equipment salesman, said he didn't mind last
week when a screener in Orlando asked to look inside the coffee cup he
carried through a checkpoint.

"Looking into it -- that's fine,"said Ibrahim as he waited, Starbucks
cup in hand, to pick up a traveler at Tampa International."Banning it is
an inconvenience."

The new rule shouldn't be a big inconvenience for passengers or hurt
businesses at Tampa International, Miller said. Travelers can buy drinks
and food in shops at the secure gate areas, he said. Starbucks has
kiosks on both sides of the checkpoints at Tampa International.

"If passengers know they can't take it through, they'll go to the
airside and get it there,"he said. The airport will post signs, Miller
said. He will ask vendors in the terminal and security guards at shuttle
stops to tell passengers.

Reagan National Airport in Washington modifed plastic Tupperware-style
containers to carry drink cups through X-ray machines after screeners
banned beverages, spokeswoman Tara Hamilton said. Those containers would
still be allowed, Rosenker said.

"We got a lot of complaints from passengers and crew members who just
bought coffee and had to dump it,"she said."It's really hard to chug
that steaming cup of coffee."


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