In the News: TSA Drops Effort to Allow Small Knives on Planes

The head of the Transportation Security Administration announced Wednesday he would drop his effort to allow small knives and some sporting equipment in carry-on luggage on planes. The U.S. Transportation Security Administration was pressure from airline executives, unions, lawmakers, relatives of victims of terrorist attacks and its own employees to keep the ban on carrying pocket knives onto U.S. airliners.

The decision to retain the knife ban was confirmed in a TSA statement e-mailed today by spokesman David Castelveter.

“The flight attendants were right to push back hard on the issue, and the CEOs were right to join hands with the flight attendants,” William Swelbar, an aviation research engineer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said.

The policy, announced in March, would have eased restrictions on carrying on knives with blades less than 2.36 inches (6 centimeters) long, as well as hockey sticks and golf clubs. Pistole had argued that baggage screeners should concentrate on explosives that could bring down a plane rather than small knives. The agency had also justified the change as an attempt to match U.S. rules with those in other parts of the world and better reflect intelligence on active terrorist threats.

The decision was widely praised by groups that opposed Pistole's effort. The 90,000-member Coalition of Flight Attendant Unions was a major opponent to the change, holding rallies and lobbying lawmakers.

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