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It's time to ditch your Bics at airport

Passengers who puff will have to trade in lighters for matchbooks when a new security ban takes effect.

By LAUREN BAYNE ANDERSON
Published April 13, 2005

TAMPA - On a smoking deck Tuesday at Tampa International Airport, passengers lit their cigarettes with butane lighters, inhaling a few final puffs before boarding.

Starting Thursday, they'll have to use matches.

That's when the Transportation Security Administration will start banning lighters aboard planes. Butane, Zippo and novelty lighters will not be allowed past airport security checkpoints or in checked baggage.

Passengers on the smoking deck located on the third level of the Landside terminal teased each other about the new rules.

"Stick 'em up. I have a lighter," joked Matt Ellsworth, 30, who was flying to North Carolina.

Smoker Fred Carter, 56, said if lighters are banned, matches should be, too.

He noted that Richard Reid, the al-Qaida follower who tried to blow up a trans-Atlantic jetliner in 2001 with explosives hidden in his shoes, tried to light the fuse with matches.

"It doesn't make any sense at all - you can bring matches and not a lighter," Carter said. "They're all flammable."

Lauren Stover, a TSA spokesperson, acknowledged matches are harder to detect than lighters, most of which have metal parts that set off detectors.

"We continue to assess threats, and the day might come when matches will be added to the list of banned items," Stover said.

Joe Sciara, 71, said he feels safer with the lighter ban and thinks the restrictions should go further.

"Corkscrews can hurt someone. You can stab someone with that," he said. "I have a portable electric razor. What's to stop someone from hiding a bomb in that?"

The airport has started alerting passengers to the lighter ban. Drivers pulling into the short-term parking lot Tuesday were greeted with signs warning about the change.

Wayne Anderson and Jack Simonson, who were smoking outside the airport, joked about buying stock in a match company.

They said they're willing to do anything in the name of security, but felt no safer with lighters banned.

"Terrorists will find another way if they really want to do something," Simonson said.

U.S. carriers, he said, will soon be as thorough as Israel's El Al airline, which conducts background checks on all passengers and puts them through rigorous interrogations before departure.

"We'll just learn to live with it like they do in Israel," Simonson said.

Richard Bloom, dean of the college of arts and sciences at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Arizona, said the Israeli system focuses on intelligence gathering, and the United States should follow suit.

He hopes the TSA has weighed the impact of carrying lighters vs. matches on planes.

"Hopefully, the people who made the decision are privy to ongoing intelligence that lets them know what they need to do," Bloom said. "It's not necessarily a better machine or procedure that we need. It's do we have the right one at the given moment."

--Times staff writer Jean Heller contributed to this report.

[Last modified April 13, 2005, 01:44:01]