Washington DC- Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff has announced new air travel security restrictions in light of ongoing terrorism threats.  During his appearance on Sunday’s Meet The Press, Secretary Chertoff announced that begining at 12:01 AM, Tuesday August 15, passengers would no longer be permitted onboard commercial airliners arriving in or departing from any US airport.

Citing reports that the suspects arrested by UK authorities on Thursday were plotting to use chemicals that were undetectable by current scanning equipment used by TSA screeners, Chertoff stated that DHS officials felt that this solution was the only one devised that would ensure that terrorists would be unable to harm an airliner in the United States.

“We continue to evaluate new and innovated screening technologies to keep Americans safe in the air,” stated Chertoff “In fact the policy going into effect this Tuesday is a direct result of our ongoing security testing.”

The Secretary discussed an early security screening experiment that was conducted at five pilot airports.  Passengers departing from Baltimore-Washington International (BWI), Logan Airport in Boston (BOS), Chicago’s Midway Airport (MDW), Dallas Love Field (DAL), and Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL) were prohibited from wearing clothing onboard aircraft in an attempt to reduce the number of banned items being brought onboard.  According to Chertoff the tests were a partial success, as the number of prohibited items that were discovered at security checkpoints increased ten fold.  However the tests were discontinued due to the large number of passenger complaints that were received due to passengers “sticking” to the leather seats onboard JetBlue aircraft. 

TSA officials also discovered that during the test period a starting number of Southwest Airlines crew members onboard flights departing from the pilot airports seemed to be stricken with sudden blindness causing increased flight delays and cancelations.

****NOTE:This is not a real news story, any resemblance to a real news story is purely coincidental, you will still be able to fly on Tuesday. :D