Ok, this may be yet another reason for me not to travel to the US... crazy people...:
Airline passengers, airline staff and even the acting Prime Minister, John Anderson, reacted with incredulity yesterday to the latest US directive that passengers be prevented from queuing outside aircraft toilets during long-haul flights across the Pacific.
...
Mr Anderson led a chorus of protests to the toilet ban, which came into effect yesterday, saying the Government had no intention of forcing the airline to comply. Look, I'm a little surprised, I have to say," he said. "I think this one will have to be handled with common sense and sensitivity. I guess what the US authorities are looking for is any sort of suspicious congregation of people that might be . . . preparing for something nasty - to launch an attack on a plane or something like that. But it has got to be handled the right way. This is going to require a bit of common sense and a bit of tact, and I wouldn't want to overreact, I'd have to say, because the reports at the moment do sound a little bit hard to handle."
The Flight Attendants Association said it was surprised by the move. It said it would request extra staff aboard long-haul flights so that the increased duties expected of flight attendants - because of tighter security - would not affect passenger service. Qantas officials, who have accepted the directive, could shed little light yesterday on how the toilets would be managed other than to say that flight attendants would monitor queues and send passengers back to their seats if the queues became too long.
Taken from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/07/1073437346012.html
Airline passengers, airline staff and even the acting Prime Minister, John Anderson, reacted with incredulity yesterday to the latest US directive that passengers be prevented from queuing outside aircraft toilets during long-haul flights across the Pacific.
...
Mr Anderson led a chorus of protests to the toilet ban, which came into effect yesterday, saying the Government had no intention of forcing the airline to comply. Look, I'm a little surprised, I have to say," he said. "I think this one will have to be handled with common sense and sensitivity. I guess what the US authorities are looking for is any sort of suspicious congregation of people that might be . . . preparing for something nasty - to launch an attack on a plane or something like that. But it has got to be handled the right way. This is going to require a bit of common sense and a bit of tact, and I wouldn't want to overreact, I'd have to say, because the reports at the moment do sound a little bit hard to handle."
The Flight Attendants Association said it was surprised by the move. It said it would request extra staff aboard long-haul flights so that the increased duties expected of flight attendants - because of tighter security - would not affect passenger service. Qantas officials, who have accepted the directive, could shed little light yesterday on how the toilets would be managed other than to say that flight attendants would monitor queues and send passengers back to their seats if the queues became too long.
Taken from http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2004/01/07/1073437346012.html
