Word: plotting
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Hundreds of canceled flights. Huge lines at airports. Ferocious new baggage restrictions. Long delays. Traveling by air during the peak August holiday season is always an ordeal, but this year, it's far more strenuous than usual. Almost a week after the foiling of an alleged terrorist plot to blow up planes flying across the Atlantic, international air traffic remains snarled, especially at British airports, including Heathrow, the world's busiest international hub. Thousands of passengers - and their bags - have been stranded there, and the airlines and the company that runs Heathrow are now engaged in a nasty dispute over...
...This time, there are grumbles aplenty, but no mass-scale defections. "Passengers are getting more used to the idea of terrorism as an ongoing threat," says Philip Baggaley, airline analyst for Standard & Poor's in New York - which did not change its ratings on any U.S. airlines after the plot disclosure. He expects passenger traffic to slow after the holiday season, but says it will be hard to tell how much of that is due to security concerns, and how much to the weakening U.S. economy. And, unless the Bush Administration adds new security-related fees onto ticket prices...
...That opinion, shared by other analysts and airline industry officials, is confirmed by an informal survey by Germany's Deutsche Bank following the foiled plot. It found that only 11% of passengers planned to change their near-term travel plans. The tough new baggage restrictions, in which nearly all carry-on luggage was initially banned, could have an impact on future travel, the survey found, but since then the rules have already been eased slightly to allow some cabin baggage. The upshot, according to Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Reid: "Current travel volumes should not be challenged." The one sector that...
...That doesn't mean there aren't serious strains. The biggest at the moment is on airports, particularly the labor-intensive and often inefficient systems in place for handling baggage. Security worldwide was massively increased following the foiled plot. Liquids and gels have been banned from hand luggage on flights in the U.S. and elsewhere. And passengers flying between the U.K. and the U.S. were for several days all searched by hand and barred from bringing anything on board with them other than a select few items in a clear plastic bag. The British Home Secretary, John Reid, urged other...
...British suspects detained in Pakistan as part of the investigation into the alleged plot to blow up planes flying from Great Britain to the U.S. is connected to the militant Islamic leader Maulana Masood Azhar, one of India's most wanted terrorists. Azhar family members told TIME that the sister-in law of Rashid Rauf, 25, who Pakistani intelligence officers fingered early on as a "key suspect," is married to Azhar's brother...