Hopes of a universal end to the one cabin-bag rule for passengers at UK airports may be dashed despite widespread expectations that the restriction would be lifted next month.
Ministers have yet to sanction ending the restriction, although they are expected to do so next month. However, the move will be tied to use of high-tech security scanners currently used on the cabin bags of transfer passengers in a trial at Heathrow.
The scanners provide multiple X-ray images of luggage from more than one angle, allowing security staff to process bags quicker. But the machines are in short supply.
BAA, which operates Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, has ordered 63 of the aTiX scanners. However, it admits its best hope is to have 50 installed by November because of competing orders from airports outside the UK – and it would need 150 to install one on every security line.
Heathrow is likely to take priority because of its transfer and corporate traffic. Many of the scanners are going into Heathrow’s Terminal 5, which will not open until the end of March, and will be used exclusively by British Airways.
A BA spokesman admitted this week that talks with the Department for Transport suggest the baggage restriction might be lifted initially only on transfer traffic.
It is feared that lifting the one-bag restriction more widely without the scanners in place will lead to the kind of security queues that blighted UK airports last autumn.
Manchester airport chief executive Geoff Muirhead conceded there will be a shortage of scanners, while pleading for relaxation of the restriction.
“It would be a catastrophe if the rule was relaxed at certain airports and not others,” he told Travel Weekly.
“It would be crazy to do different things at different airports. Not enough people comply with the restrictions now. It would create more mayhem.”