European police forces continued their hunt Thursday for a suspect who failed to turn up for an Air France flight to Los Angeles, as Washington said a Christmas suicide air attack had been planned that would have been even more devastating than those on September 11, 2001.
Speaking to BBC television in London, US Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge said "a stream of intelligence" had pointed to an air attack in the United States.
"It talks about attacks equal to or greater than those that occurred on September 11, talked about these attacks occurring in a time frame that covered our traditional holiday period, and it also included reference to aviation," Ridge said.
A global air security alert has forced the cancellation of several flights over the past two weeks, including six Air France connections between Paris and Los Angeles on December 24 and 25, and delayed successive flights from London to Washington.
An Afghan national named only by French security officials as Abdoulaye had been booked on the first of the cancelled flights from Paris - though he never checked in - and US media reports said there were fears he could have been planning to bring on board a small bomb.
On Wednesday French ministers confirmed the man was being sought but said it was premature to speak of links with the al-Qaeda network.
With anxieties about in-flight safety at a new high, there was mixed reaction to new security norms being brought in by the United States.
Singapore Airlines and the Australian carrier Qantas were two companies who said they would observe a directive from Washington banning passengers from loitering near toilets on flight to the United states, but others said the idea was impractical.
"The US Transport Security Administration is now requiring that passengers on flights to the US are not to congregate in groups in any areas of the aircraft, especially around the lavatories," a Qantas spokeswoman said. "Qantas pilots are making pre-flight announcements to this effect and cabin crew are monitoring passengers during the flight."
However the London-based Times newspaper quoted an insider at British Airways as saying, "Queueing is a great British tradition. How on earth are we supposed to organise trips to the loo? It would be unworkable. There's big demand for the loo after meals have been cleared away."
Britain's Daily Telegraph also reported opposition in London to new US rules which will force many British nationals to pay for an entry visa to the United States from later this year. Currently Britons can enter the United States for up to three months without a visa.
The change will come about because the United States is requiring visitors' passports issued after October 26 to bear "biometric indicators" - computer chips carrying a digitally-encoded record of the owners' features - and these will not be ready in Britain till mid-2005.
With pressure growing to introduce the new identification technology, consortiums representing Japanese and European companies said they had begun discussions over a possible tie-up as a first step towards establishing a global standard.
Australia said it was trailing a hi-tech face recognition system to screen airline passengers for potential terrorists trying to enter the country.
And British Airways has held talks with BAE Systems about arming its 300 aircraft with lasers to deflect terrorist missiles, the Guardian newspaper reported.
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