Airline passengers' mobile phones and men's wallets will have to be X-rayed as the mainland phases in new standards at 147 airports to ensure flight safety and security.

The General Administration of Civil Aviation of China (CAAC) is monitoring the testing of the new procedures at airports in Shenzhen, Guangdong Province and Haikou, Hainan Province, both in south China.

The audit comprises 360 items in 10 categories including controlled area management, passenger safety and airline security, according to media reports.

"In the past, passengers directly passed their wallets and cell phones over the table," said Meng Meiwei, a security official at Meilan International Airport in Haikou. "But now these items are required to be X-rayed."

The procedure should help build confidence in aviation security, Meng said.

"Our standards, outlined in a set of regulations by CAAC, are even stricter than the standards set by the International Civil Aviation Organization," a CAAC spokesman said yesterday in Beijing.

"It's expected to close the loopholes and identify potential deficiencies in airplane safety, such as curbing individuals stowing away in the wheel wells of airliners."

Several cases of children killed falling from wheel wells have been reported in recent years.

On May 25, a 10-year-old boy stowed away in the landing gear compartment of a China Eastern Airlines plane in Dunhuang and fell to his death shortly after the plane took off, headed for Lanzhou. Both cities are in Northwest China's Gansu Province.

The audited findings will be released in two months. Any substandard procedures will have to be corrected within two years. The penalty could involve reduced service charges, air routes or airliners.

China is one of the 188 "contracting states" that are committed to adopting standards and procedures set by the United Nations specialized agency the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) headquartered in Montreal, Canada.

The ICAO established the Universal Security Audit Programme in June 2002 with the objective of promoting global aviation security through the auditing of contracting states on a regular basis to determine the status of implementation of the ICAO's Annex 17 Standards.

(China Daily August 23, 2005)