Flying Continental back yesterday morning from Bonaire, NA - after a horrifically slow check-in process (okay, it's a tiny Caribbean airport, this isn't anything new), we arrived in the waiting area to find an enormous boarding line. It turns out that (as I understand it) they had started boarding the plane, then something tipped the captain/flight crew that the local security was not following new TSA policies to his satisfaction. They offloaded the plane and rescreened every passenger, including a hand search of carry-ons, full pat downs, and...no liquids permitted to be carried on, "not one gram". Not the bottle of water you bought in the airport snack bar, not your 3-1-1 liquids, not even (from what I saw in the pile of "contraband") your duty-free bottle of rum. Eventually they opened a second screening line at the other "gate" to speed things up a little, but overall it led to an hour delay before we took off. Luckily, CO's baggage crew at IAH double-timed it unloading the plane so that we could recheck our bags after customs and still make our connection, but overall a horrendous experience.

From what I'm reading here, this extra screening and no-liquid rule was not in line with the increased "security" being implemented at other airports. I don't know whether BON security staff overreact to the captain's complaints, or if the captain misunderstood or overdid it on the new rules, but (for once) maybe TSA isn't to blame for a security snafu...