Security staff at Johannesburg International Airport have begun seizing nail files and butter knives from passengers since the attacks in the United States, an airline spokesman said Monday.
Rich Monde of South African Airways (SAA) told AFP that objects confiscated since last Tuesday's hijacked jetliner attacks on New York and Washington also include screwdrivers, scissors, cans of mace spray and penknives.
"These things have always been on the Federal Aviation Authority's list of banned objects but people have been getting relaxed. Now we are implementing it," he said.
The hijackers who flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been armed with knives and paper cutters. The US aviation authority last week banned all knives from being taken aboard flights.
The FAA had previously only barred knives with blades longer than 10 centimeters.
SAA has three flights to the United States a day.
The Star newspaper on Monday reported that all passengers at Johannesburg airport are now being searched, in spite of the fact that the local aviation authorities only required one in five passengers to be searched.
"We have been ordered to step up our searches from 20 percent to 100 percent and we have added security checks in place," Joe Serobe, the security chief for the Airports Company of South Africa, told the newspaper -- JOHANNESBURG (AFP)
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