Airport security

[Steve Maskery]

I've just been to visit some friends in Ireland, got home yesterday.
At Knock airport, my checked luggage went through and I had a cabin case and my normal handbag. If you are going to make jokes, you'd better be good, because after 30 years I've heard them all before.

"Have you got any liquids?"
"Yes, some contact lens solution".

Bottle was duly bagged and scanned along with my handbag and cabin luggage. My braces set off the scanner, but apart from that, all was well.

When I got back to blighty it was warm and sunny and I didn't need my jacket, so I rolled it up and went to put it in the large pocket of my cabin case. To find... half a bottle of Tango. I'd bought it airside on the way out and forgotten about it.

So much for airport security.

 

[porker]

I once got back through Heathrow without showing my passport. I was at the time a frequent traveller and had registered for the Iris service but came though one day and the machine was broken. As I approached the machine an immigration official told me it was broken and opened the gate to let me through. My passport was never checked. This was only a couple of years ago.

Sent from my SM-G920F using Tapatalk

 

[cutting42]

I fly a lot and have had bottles in my bags pass through as well but usually only part full and certainly not always, they usually are detected.

I used to use IRIS as well, excellent system. Used to amuse me when opportunistic people would wander up to the machine passport in hand looking expectant. As users would know you did not need a passport, just an eye scan so as soon as you saw the passport you knew they were out of luck.

 

[Bm101]

What makes me wonder is that bit where they take opened liquid containers off you.
They take them and put them in a big bin with all the other ones. They usher you through and meanwhile all those unchecked liquids are in that bin. Right next to the customs gates, the busiest part of the airport.
It makes No Sense In Any Way.
Please put all your suspect liquids together right here. In the most secure, convoluted part of the airport. While we send you on your way.

 

[cutting42]

What makes me wonder is that bit where they take opened liquid containers off you.
They take them and put them in a big bin with all the other ones. They usher you through and meanwhile all those unchecked liquids are in that bin. Right next to the customs gates, the busiest part of the airport.
It makes No Sense In Any Way.
Please put all your suspect liquids together right here. In the most secure, convoluted part of the airport. While we send you on your way.

It was due to a foiled terrorist plot using liquid explosives which were two liquids that needed to be mixed then detonated on the plane. In isolation they are not explosive so no problem just collecting them together.

 

[Stanleymonkey]

Amazing that they let stuff like this slip through.

My wife was stopped the other week because she hadn't use the regulation size plastic bag. Hers was a bit larger. They made a fuss and had someone repack her make up into the correct size bag!!

 

[Bm101]

What makes me wonder is that bit where they take opened liquid containers off you.
They take them and put them in a big bin with all the other ones. They usher you through and meanwhile all those unchecked liquids are in that bin. Right next to the customs gates, the busiest part of the airport.
It makes No Sense In Any Way.
Please put all your suspect liquids together right here. In the most secure, convoluted part of the airport. While we send you on your way.

It was due to a foiled terrorist plot using liquid explosives which were two liquids that needed to be mixed then detonated on the plane. In isolation they are not explosive so no problem just collecting them together.

I'm with you. I'm just saying what if the madheads ever got it in their minds to go through in a procession. Each one dropping off another bottle. Then your final man goes through with an accelerant, some liquid in a bottle with a trigger in the cap. Maybe it's just me. I'm no chemist but it doesn't seem that far fetched. I'm a bit thick though to be fair.

 

[stevep]

As a regular visitor to Saudi , it amazes me when they confiscate a small bottle of water from you when the people around you are carrying 20 Litre containers of 'holy water' !

 

[Rorschach]

It's all a con anyway, if someone wants to do something bad they will find a way to do it.

 

[Gui]

Years ago I had this great Gerber multi tool that I used to carry often at weekend when walking about in the great outdoors (possibly illegally as it had a decent locking blade but at the time I never really did think about that). That tool is unusual in that when folded it looks like a small metallic rectangular box. Just found a pic:

Anyway, for some reason one weekend I put it in my wife's handbag. We both forgot about it as the daily grind took over. A couple of weeks later she had to fly to Germany for work and you guessed it, with her handbag as cabin luggage and the knife in it. That was circa 2004, via Stansted. The bag did trigger the scanner but incredibly they couldn't pin point or find what it was (I suppose that's women's handbags for you: a cross between a black hole and the Bermuda Triangle, maybe that's why they are so expensive !). My wife was oblivious (fortunately for her) and they blamed the alert on the fact she had two mobile phones in her bag. On the return leg from Germany she did not even get stopped at security.
We found the knife after her return home and I got an earache that lasted for about 10 years...
Stansted security got the last laugh (actually no, they were not laughing). In 2014 we flew to France. I had lost track of that Gerber for a while. In fact I had been looking for it everywhere in the house in the preceding weeks. Anyway, Unbeknown to me it was in one of those sub-pockets deep inside the rucksack that I was carrying, left over from a camping trip, despite inspecting the bag beforehand !
This time the scanner did pick it up clearly. They knew what they were looking for before finding it. I would imagine that the detection technology has become more accurate in the last decade.

 

[Mark A]

On a flight to the US a few years ago I noticed a woman sat ahead of me on the plane with two 6in long plastic spike things holding her hair up in a bun. Sort of like chop sticks but with a round globule at one end. In the hands of a determined nutter they could easily do a lot of damage to someone.

 

[novocaine]

TSA and airport security's primary role is not to stop nut cases getting on a plane (they have never foiled an attempt). it is to make passengers feel safer and act as a deterant to nut cases trying it in the first place. it is the last line of defence, if it gets that far all our other systems have failed.
now to move past that little rant, I flew back from kazakhstan with a straight razor in my hand luggage, got to frankfurt and got stopped passing though baggage check, they removed my can of deodorant and sent me on my way (had to carry my hold baggage as first airport couldn't check it in for some reason). I've also shut down aberdeen airport because of my camera flash. I travel a lot.

 

[Eric The Viking]

I, too, used to carry a Swiss Army knife, in my briefcase. Later I added a Leatherman (different tools including good pliers and a wicked blade), and a set of jewellers' screwdrivers in a pillbox. On several occasions I forgot they were there and got through, Heathrow and several regional airports in the USA.

At the other extreme, I once had to stay an extra two days in Tel Aviv, when Ben Gurion security took so long that the plane left without me (when I got to the front of the queue, they even spent a while loking for a trigger on my camera monopod).

I don't know if it's still the case, but business class used to mean proper cutlery and wine glasses... :shock:

As has been said, I too am convinced all the new regs are largely for show. I'd be nervous of saying it's never happened, but I've not heard of any terrorist being caught atvan airport security check. IIRC, Richard Reed, the "shoe bomber", was overpowered when, after some odd behavi9our, his trainers started smouldering on the flight he'd boarded. The deterrent effect doesn't seem to stop the attacks, and there are umpteen other "soft" targets, for example church services in Pakistan, and schools in West Africa.

When flying, I am much more nervous about the USA "air marshals" carying sidearms (and a Bruce Willis complex).

If there's a really important Achilles heel, it's the poor quality of screening often in place for airport and airline employees.

 

[novocaine]

I guess we can't really tell if it is a deterrent or not, there a some that get though, we will never know how many actually get planned and fail or are foiled.

I once flew from canada in to the states with a cowboy (long story, imagine 6'4" monster with a stetson and boots), we were rushing, we'd been in a workshop all day and the bar before we went to the airport, got to security after checking bags in and he reached in to his pocket to find a 6" lock blade, handed to the security who took it in good grace along with his address. 2 days later it turned up on his door with a note saying "maybe next time stick it in the hold". they aint all power hungry nut cases.

 

[paulm]

I don't travel by air that much these days thankfully, after many years of regular travel to and from mainland Europe and further afield, but when I do I have to allow an extra ten minutes or so to get through security as my metal resurfaced hip always sets off the xray alarms.

Even though you tell them, ah yes, that will be my metal hip, they still of course need to go through the full pat down, belt and shoes off, pockets emptied, hand scanner, through the big machine a couple more times etc followed by hand luggage search as they have now decided you are going to be their project for the day !

Wouldn't have it any other way though, the more thorough they are the safer I feel !

 

[Jonzjob]

A few years back I came back to France through Stansted. Just in front of me in the security queue was a woman in a FULL burka. I would have loved to have seen her/his passport photo?

This wasn't it obviously, but



We have just got back from Venice for a few daze and flew from Toulouse with Air France Hop. The security thee was good, friendly and courtious. These days I make sure that my belt buckle is plastic and any metal bits are in my bum bag so that I can just chuck all the bags in the trays along with the MacBook and walk through clean, except that is coming back from Venice when I forgot my dammed watch

 

[Jonzjob]

Lets hope that the terrorists don't read this either??

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-37314826

 

[Stanleymonkey]

A few years back, a friend's husband fitted a new main box for us (circuit breakers and all that - cant think of the proper name)

They were from Glasgow and down visiting the inlaws, but he had just become a sparky and wanted to fit one for experience. It took longer than planned and torches and candles were needed! He really liked my Stanley tripod torch and kept talking about it.

Next time they drove down - we bought him one to say thank you - complete with presentation tin.

In the end he was ill, so just his wife came alone and chucked it in her bag without unwrapping it or realising what the gift was!

But she had flown for once and we didn't know. When they x-rayed her handbag it contained batteries, wiring and metal cylinders inside a bigger pipe! She got flustered and blurted out that it wasn't hers - someone else had given it to her to take back to Glasgow! :shock:

You can imagine the fun and games that came next!

 

[HappyHacker]

In a previous life I did a lot of travelling around Europe by plane. As a well dressed older businessman I got stopped and searched everywhere. Charles de Gaulle was the worst, apart from having to take jacket, belt, shoes off I was always stopped for a "random" swabbing of computer etc for explosives after I had got dressed again. On transiting through Amsterdam my hand luggage was always searched as I went through security again. On one occasion, with a colleague she was told she could not take some makeup with her, she argued as she had in the previous two days been through security at Heathrow, Amsterdam, Stockholm, and back to Amsterdam on route to Newcastle with the same makeup, I pretended she was not with me. She got into the departure lounge with her makeup 10 minutes later. At Heathrow I was with the same colleague when she had a very large pair of wallpaper scissors confiscated!

I got to Switzerland though two airports and found I had my large Swiss army knife in my briefcase.

I do my best not to fly these days, it is all too much aggravation.

 

[RogerS]

The 100 ml limit is a nonsense and, as others have said, a sop to 'reassurance'. Shortly after this came in, Channel 4 did an excellent programme with a chemist who mixed together two chemicals - about 10ml each IRC. Blew quite a big hole in the side of a test fuselage.