http://www.examiner.ie/breaking/2003...ory108243.html
A passenger was caught with a knife and an extendable baton on board a domestic flight today in the latest breach of Australian airline security.
The 30-year-old man had been “obstructive” but made no violent threats and did not brandish the weapons, a police spokeswoman said.
“He was generally being a nuisance,” said Anne Lyons.
The Regional Express plane was flying to Sydney from Lismore in New South Wales state. Police interrogated the man on his arrival at Sydney.
Lyons said no one was hurt and there had been “no threat of harm to anyone on board the flight”.
The man was undergoing a psychiatric assessment and no charges had yet been filed, she said.
Police did not release his name.
Transport Workers Union state secretary Tony Sheldon said the incident “makes a mockery” of government assurances that adequate security measures are in place at Australian airports.
Australian and US authorities warned yesterday that Australia could be used as a launch pad for new al-Qaida suicide hijackings.
The incident was the latest on planes travelling in or to Australia.
Last month, a man stabbed another passenger with a fork on a flight from Bangkok to Sydney.
In June, a man was arrested after making verbal threats about crashing a domestic flight, and a week later a 68-year-old man was arrested for pulling box cutters out of his bag after take-off.
In May, a would-be hijacker on a domestic flight between Melbourne and Launceston stabbed two flight attendants with sharp wooden chopsticks as he tried unsuccessfully to break into the cockpit.
A spokesman for the airline said cabin crew noticed the baton lying across the man’s lap and confiscated it.
When police interrogated him on his arrival in Sydney he also turned in the knife he had been carrying.