As terrorists draw up ever more dastardly plans, travellers may face truly probing countermeasures

Travellers were forced to make last-minute changes to their garments today when investigators uncovered a terrorist plot to bring down aircraft with exploding buttons. “It's truly diabolical,” said a spokesperson for Scotland Yard, after 30 suspects were taken into custody in Brixton, Hixton, Lixton, Wixton, and Walmsley-on-Souse. “These might look like ordinary buttons,” he said, pointing to a collection of what did indeed look like standard- issue, faux-bone, fit-through-a-hole fasteners. “But each contains a timed charge that would set off an explosion the equivalent of a stick of TNT. Multiply that by the six buttons on the double-breasted suit jackets to which they were attached, and you can imagine the chaos in the air. Luckily for us, these chaps know nothing about fashion, and the sudden increase in sales of so démodé a garment drew out attention to their cabal.”

Passengers at Heathrow and other airports around the world reacted philosophically as they ripped and chewed away the offending items. “If that's what it takes for us to be secure, I guess we'll just have to live with it,” they said, throwing the buttons into bins, and applying Velcro™ with a specially provided glue gun.

Markets around the world reacted wildly yesterday as sales of novels by Dan Brown plummeted, following the discovery of a terrorist plot to blow up aircraft with specially rigged copies of The Da Vinci Code. “These Islamophiles will stop at nothing to stomp all over liberty,” said U.S. President George W. Bush, who demonstrated to the nation how copies of the book will have to be placed in specially designed containers, which will then be dealt with by bomb-disposal experts at an undisclosed location, probably in the desert. “See,” he said, “what these cunning sons of Mohammad have done is to invent a special ink which, when exposed to aircraft air, ignites a detonating charge. One second you're reading the name Mary Magdalene and the next, it's kablooey! I'm real sorry, because this is a book I've been planning to get around to for a long time. Oh, well. That's life in a world full of enemies. Just to be on the safe side, we're asking the cooperation of airlines in banning all reading material on flights.”

Passengers at Washington's Dulles airport and elsewhere reacted philosophically as they surrendered their books and magazines. “I guess if we have to give up reading in order to be safe, then the hell with literacy,” they said.

All pocket watches have been banned from flights following today's disclosure of a plot by terrorists to use hypnosis to bring down planes. An FBI spokesperson in Los Angeles described how Islamic fundamentalist mesmerists planned to use “watch the watch” techniques of mass hypnosis to convince passengers to run from one side of the plane to the other, causing it to roll, which would then activate the suitcases full of nitroglycerine that had been smuggled aboard as checked luggage. “You can imagine the panic in the air,” she said, as passengers willingly surrendered their pocket watches and declared, philosophically, that none of them really cared what time it was, anyway.

Passengers reacted philosophically today to the extraction of their teeth and nails following the revelation of a terrorist plot to wreak havoc in the sky by biting and scratching at 39,000 feet.

A terrorist plan to bring down aircraft with detonating poo has been averted. The Pakistan government was closely involved in the investigation of a plot that would have combined curry and liquid explosives and the kind of sphincter control that only fanatics can muster to cause mass death in the sky. Colonic irrigationists reacted philosophically to the interruption of their vacations and their assignment by the government to airport security checks. Passengers were less sanguine about the hose arrangements. Still, one puts up with what one has to put with, when safety is concerned.

All pilots have been banned from aircraft after one was discovered doing a crossword that contained the word mosque. Passengers reacted calmly to long delays incurred while they received flight training. “Really, what with global positioning and computers and all, you just have to get the damn thing up and point it in the right direction,” said retired teacher Donna McKinley. “If that's what it takes to be safe, well, so be it. I sure do miss those buttons, though,” she said, with a grin that could only be described as “philosophical”.