Originally Posted by
oldjonesy
We can always tell the americans. They are the ones standing in line to go through the metal detector machine thingo - in their socks, shoes in hand.
...Looking ridiculous
We flew BNE LAX yesterday on QF15. This is exactly what we saw - Americans putting their shoes into the bins to the chagrin of the staff. At one point it was so bad they announced to everyone in line to keep their shoes on unless told otherwise.
No NOS anywhere in sight, and BNE has now gone to Kippie bags at the initial checkpoint, but there is no longer a mandatory secondary search at the gate, only a selective one. But there was a heavy presence of Australian Federal Police K9 units all over the departure area and the terminal. They were very thorough but went out of their way to be friendly to all the passengers as they did their sweeps up and down the rows of seats and the lines of passengers. The dogs checked everyone but inobstrusively. It seems to me this is a very effective method for detecting the underwear and shoe bombers of the world without invading privacy if the dogs can indeed detect those kinds of explosives at a short distance.