GroundSupportWorldWide.com |

LONDON --

Airline passengers bound for the United States faced a hodgepodge of security measures across Europe on Monday, and airports did not appear to be following a U.S. request for increased screening of passengers from 14 countries.

U.S. officials in Washington said the new security measures would be implemented Monday but there were few visible changes on the ground in Europe, which has thousands of passengers on hundreds of daily flights to the United States.

Large hubs such as London, Paris, Amsterdam and Frankfurt alone account for 20-30 trans-Atlantic flights a day each - but there was no uniform consensus on necessary security measures.

In Britain, a major international transport hub, a spokesman for the Department of Transportation said he was still trying to decipher the practical implications of the new U.S. rules. He refused to give his name due to the sensitivity of the subject.

U.S. authorities said as of Monday, anyone traveling from or through nations regarded as state sponsors of terrorism - as well as "other countries of interest" - will be required to go through enhanced screening. The Transportation Security Administration said those techniques would include full-body pat-downs, carryon bag searches, full-body scanning and explosive detection technology.

The U.S. State Department lists Cuba, Iran, Sudan and Syria as state sponsors of terrorism. The other countries whose passengers are supposed to face enhanced screening include Afghanistan, Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and Yemen.

Nationals from those countries already require a visa to enter the United States.

The new measures followed the arrest of a Nigerian man, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who allegedly tried to set off an explosive device on a flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on Christmas Day. Abdulmutallab is now at a federal prison in Milan, Michigan and faces a court hearing on Friday.