PARIS, Sept 18: Two leading official suppliers of the Swiss Army Knife are claiming they are the unfair victims of the Sept 11 attacks, and that if they are not allowed again into duty-free stores at airports, the celebrated knife could very well become a thing of the past.

The makers of the red-coloured multi-use device, with a white Swiss cross that sports a corkscrew in some models, say they’ve been treated unfairly by both the press and the public because of the September tragedy and had seen their sales plummet to dangerously low levels.

Immediately following the attack, duty-free shops at airports around the world were ordered not to sell the knives, which until then had been easily taken on board by passengers.

Press reports following the Sept 11 attacks in the United States had it that hijackers of the two American Airlines planes that slammed into the World Trade Center used Swiss army knives bought at a duty-free store at Boston airport.

The news reports immediately cancelled out, in the estimation of the companies producing them, all of the goodwill acquired by the knives over the years.

Says Urs Wyss, marketing director of Victorinox, which controls 85 percent of the market in Swiss army Knives, “the next day our sales dropped by 30 percent when duty-free stores - one of the largest sources of our sales - were banned from selling the knives. Until then, much of our business depended on sales to tourists who bought the knives at the airport as a last-minute gift before boarding their planes.”

In order to get around the airport ban, the manufacturers have decided to step up promotion of the knives at tourist centres located near airports, where passengers are warned in no uncertain terms that the knives must be left in their bags and not carried on board.