The overnight attack on US airline security rules by the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, is the inevitable boiling over of frustrations with UK and EU regulators with the once-invincible dictates of American policy makers.
Broughton said that British authorities should not “kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done”, and attacked inconsistencies and “redundant” US requirements including the removal of shoes and the pointlessness of requiring personal computers to be removed from carry-on luggage that can be screened just as effectively inside it.
But don’t expect an end to such petty lunacies at airports in Australia any day soon as trans-Atlantic tensions over “who is in charge” of the security fiascoes that afflict air travellers pass the breaking point.
For every patently stupid rule imposed by the US, there seems to another equally nonsensical one imposed by the authorities in charge of arrangements at major airports such as London Heathrow or Frankfurt.
The trans-Atlantic aviation security policy supremacy struggle is deep and bitter, and concerns EU concerns in particular over the invasive collection of personal data, not to mention body scans, demanded by the US authorities as a condition for boarding a flight to America, or even one that is just passing through its airspace on the way to Latin America, including from Canada and northern Asia.
Australia is a cautious bystander in this brawl, as made clear by the comments made by Anthony Albanese, the minister for infrastructure and transport, on Sky earlier today.
Albanese refused to be drawn into discussing any of the security procedures that were criticised by British Airways, but emphasised the Government’s determination to keep the skies as secure and safe as possible.
A fair interpretation of this is that the continuing lunacies in security procedures would only be unwound slowly, and that last December’s lifting of the ban on crochet hooks, badminton rackets and nail clippers in carry-on luggage was about as good as it is going to get for some time.
7 thoughts on “Petty security lunacy to continue at airports here despite BA protest”
Meski
October 28, 2010 at 3:07 pmThey miss what they shouldn’t and pick up what they shouldn’t, more often than not, when I go through. Not through any deliberate attempt to put stuff through on my account, just that I use my backpack at work, and it has cutters and screwdrivers etc in it. I wish they’d give up on making you unpack laptops. That one is crazy. So, I take a laptop out, but I leave power supplies, external drives, cameras, gps systems, phones inside, which have equal complexity viewed by an xray. (endrant)
Gavin Moodie
October 28, 2010 at 3:11 pmI remain bemused at Australians’ apparently calm acceptance of these petty tyrannies. Amanda Vanstone challenged them correctly.
Rena Zurawel
October 28, 2010 at 4:25 pmJust because I had both knees replaced, I became the primary suspect at the airports. I am usually taken out of the line and have to take off my shoes and go through additional circus. Last time, at the Adelaide airport they could not find the security officer with the additional equipment, a mobile looking gadget, so I miss the plane because I cannot run.
It gets really embarassing. I am still lucky I do not need a wheelchair. I saw an elderly chap being taken off the chair although he could not walk.
The more vulnarable, fragile and feeble one gets, the more of a suspect he/she becomes. Very easy target.
And then, you listen to some stupid porno-scanner advocates about muslim women in burqas who can carry weapons in their nickers.
Some people are too keen to look into the nickers.
Just wondering what qualifications are needed to get permission for peeping.
Or is it a clever marketing of stupid gadgets that have to be sold all around the world?
Rena Zurawel
October 28, 2010 at 5:03 pmSorry for my mistake. It should read: ‘ ..I missed the plane, because I had to wait, along with three elderly women, for the ‘special’ security guy. When he finally came, it was too late for my plane and I cannot possibly run. My surgery, on both of my knees, is very recent. One cannot complain not to aggreviate the situation.
Somebody said that ‘if you sacrifice freedom for security, you get neither’ .
AuFozzy
October 29, 2010 at 12:09 amI would tend to agree with the British Airways Chairman. If he want the situation changed, he simply needs to put forward a case for it to be in politician’s best interest to ratchet DOWN the security checking.
At the end of the day, every politician and security drone is simply going to cover their arse.
It’s a simply that if anyone gets kill or injured, the politicians will be blamed, so they’ll keep putting in place more draconian measures so they can say they have done something – doesn’t matter if it isn’t effective.
A good starting point is the blog of Bruce Schnier ( http://www.schneier.com/ ).
John
October 29, 2010 at 4:48 amIt amuses me to see them checking the flight crews through…’Helloooo?’ They are up the front with all our lives in their hands!!! Must make sure they don’t have any knitting needles…..
AR
November 1, 2010 at 7:37 amAnd then the news comes through, following a tip off from Saudi intelligence – exact details, route & destination, FedEx tracking number, odd that -, abd the drum beat continues without a beat. “Need to have YOU keep removing your shoes & belts etc coz two items of mail went into the cargo hold..”.
As as been pointed out over & over, no passenger checking has ever, anywhere on this particular plantet, caught a potential hi-jacker (sole exception being El Al in 1979 which was due to psychological screening not physical checking) meanwhile as found by the Wheeler Report in 2005 the gaping holes are in provenders, baggage handlers not passengers or crew. Incidentally no hold luggage screened (except for excess currency export on Asian flights ex Sydney) so a suicide bomber would get a far bigger bang from their hold luggage than underpants or shampoo bottle.