U.S.-bound passengers will soon be checked by U.S. authorities against lists of suspected terrorists before their planes take off, The USA Today reported Wednesday.

The new rule, to be effective by year-end, will allow more time to check passengers' information against the FBI's comprehensive terrorist watch lists, Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Michael Jackson was quoted as saying.

It also could halt the practice of diverting or sending back planes once they're in the air because current rules don't give U. S. authorities enough time to check if a passenger is on a watch list before a plane departs, he said.

"It's a lot easier to take one person off a plane and sort it out (abroad) than inconvenience a whole planeload of people," Jackson said.

At present, after a U.S.-bound plane takes off from a foreign airport, the airline will send the passenger information to U.S. authorities to be checked against terror watch lists.

That leaves U.S. agents racing the clock to determine whether a passenger with the same or a similar name to someone on a watch list is really a threat.

The new rule will allow them to finish checks against the watch lists at least 15 minutes before the plane leaves a foreign airport.

That could also allow enough time to avoid rerouting an international flight where a passenger's name mistakenly appears on a watch list.

In May 2005, for instance, two transatlantic flights were diverted to Maine after passengers with names similar to terrorists were flagged while the flights were en route to America.

And in 2004, a London-to-Washington flight was diverted after passenger Yusuf Islam, the singer once known as Cat Stevens, appeared on the no-fly list.

Source: Xinhua