Brussels, 20/01/2004 (Agence Europe) - Last week the Commission adopted a regulation listing the objects banned from on board passenger plane and in their holds. Regulation 68/2004 amends Regulation 622/2003 on air safety and was published in Official Journal L 10 on 16 January. It enters into force 20 days after the publication n the OJ but is applicable from 1 February 2004. This is the first time that such a list has been produced at a Community level.
According to the new regulation, all banned objects on aircraft will be banned at security check points in EU airports in the EU. National authorities will be obliged to inform passengers on what is on the list before check in procedures, notably, by putting up notices in the check in area to allow passengers, for example, to put these objects in their luggage instead of getting them confiscated. This list is not definitive: any authority has the power to ban a certain object in the future even if does not figure on the list but has to inform passengers before check in. The regulation also includes common rules allowing the personnel (including the crew) to transport certain articles needed in their jobs but which are banned for passengers (tools for maintenance and repairs).
Objects banned in planes and likely to be confiscated in security areas: any kind of revolvers, firearms (pistols, revolvers, carbines, rifles, replicas, cross bows catapults etc., all pointed, bladed objects or those used for cutting , (axes, arrows, crampons, harpoons, ice-skates, flick-knives, knives whose blades are longer than 6 cm, machetes, cut throat razors, sabres, swords, scalpels, scissors whose blades are longer than 6 cm, ski poles, certain vocational tools like drills, cutters, etc.; all blunt instruments (base ball and cricket bats, golf clubs; hockey sticks, spatulas or highly inflammable substances (munitions, detonators, explosives and explosive devices, other military explosives, mines, grenades, fireworks, bombs or smoke bombs, combustible inflammable liquids, alcoholic drinks of more than 70% proof etc); all chemical and poisonous substances (acids, corrosive substances, neutralising substance based vaporisers, radio active materials, poisons, dangerous infectious or organic substances, fire extinguishers).
Objects banned from the baggage holding: explosives, gas, inflammable liquids (petrol), inflammable solids (magnesium, fireworks), oxidants, organic peroxides (bleach), toxic or infectious substances, radioactive materials, corrosive substances, vehicle fuel systems containing fuels.