bealine

Very easy to say and very easy to print in the "Conditions of Carriage". Try stopping someone taking "the bag that Great Aunt Maud left behind last time she was here" back with them, or students at university with heavy bags travelling with another student on the same flight who has no bags! No matter what you put in the "book of words", people carrying stuff for other people is going to happen.

In fact, the security questions used to ask "Does the bag and its contents belong to you?" Now, we simply ask "Could the bag have been interfered with since it was packed?"..................a question that many a Johnny Foreigner has difficulty understanding! The idea is not to get an honest answer to the questions, but to focus the travellers' minds on security and to make them pause and think for a moment. Hopefully, the person who has been duped would then raise a question enabling us to give his/her bags an additional screening. We're not there to "catch anybody out" or "throw the rule book at them" - we're there to keep our aeroplanes and our customers safe and secure.

Now, if we were pedantic about whether a bag and its contents belong to its owner, nearly every business traveller would be stopped from flying because many items they carry will actually belong gto their employer, and not to them! The innocent pocket calculator, a laptop computer or a business gift such as a travel shaver or alarm clock could all be "Improvised Explosive Devices". Events such as Lockerbie or 09/11 can make one a bit paranoid over security issues, but at the end of the day, you have to trust your customers to a large extent. (.......and where would we be if one couldn't trust one's employer?)

The security questions are designed more to make the passenger stop and think and yes, there is a Standard Operating Procedure if someone tells you they are carrying for someone else or they left their bags in a hotel reception lobby - a private screening of the bags by trained security staff with the passenger present!