Compare and contrast: Simon Price, chief executive of Arthur Price, holds up the first
cutlery designed to meet Department for Transport specifications on board planes.
Photo: Rui Vieira/PA
Sometimes it's the small things that can have a big impact. The events of September 11 2001 may have rocked global politics to the core, but it's the armed guards in airports and long check-in queues, complete with overflowing containers of confiscated nail files, that many will remember, along with the introduction of plastic utensils on board flights.
Max Hastings, writing in the Guardian, said the policy of banning scissors, knitting needles, metal cutlery and other sharp items on board planes "infused brand awareness of al-Qaida into the minds of tens of millions of people travelling every day", while Michael Winner's concerns were more earthly. Speaking to the Sunday Times, he commented: "The food on the whole is not worth eating, but it would be nice to have proper implements we can reject it with." And now, thanks to a family-run cutlery company, we do.
Arthur Price, which promises "a lifetime of style" on its website, is now promising much more to plane travellers: stainless steel utensils that adhere to anti-terror design criteria set out by the Department for Transport (DfT).
It was only last year, in light of improved security on planes, that the DfT revised its guidelines on sharp items allowed on board flights, and Arthur Price is the first company to come up with a cutlery design to meet new specifications (round-ended knives - "more a spreader than a knife" - and forks with small prongs, according to the DfT).
Speaking to AFP, the company's chief executive, Simon Price, remarked that plastic cutlery "doesn't fit very well with a premium offering such as first or business class", and added: "we're providing airlines with a solution to this problem." Already, Air India and another Indian airline, Jet Airways, have placed orders, and word is that BAA, which owns the UK's biggest airports, is also interested.
Still, while Arthur Price's cutlery may let us take the edge off our hunger and our fear of terrorism simultaneously, it can't prevent random acts of violence in the skies. Just look at the recent case of a China Airlines flight, diverted to Taiwan after a passenger used his arm to break an inner window. Nobody was injured, but I'd stay tuned to the DfT's website: you might just see clenched fists making an appearance on the prohibited items list.
