Originally Posted by
IverTheCat
I am sorry.
When I started this thread, in retrospect, I probably was a little paranoid. My first trip to the US, being 'selected' for G4S treatment, and the various horror stories I had heard about US airport security had not helped.
In reality, the G4S additional gate check was so routine it was a non-event. No questions asked, just a recheck of my hand luggage and I got patted down.
Immigration in the US was a breeze. No third degree at all. The phototaking and finger printing took longer than the questions themselves (of which there were only about three).
I don't wish to jinx it, but if this is what it is like, then what is all the fuss about in the media? :-)
One question though. Assuming the G4S additional check is a procedure requested by the US, what does it prevent exactly? If someone with questionable motivates found out that they had been selected for this, wouldn't they simply just not bother turning up for the flight?
And also, this occurred at LHR. The security screening for all passengers at Heathrow is probably at the levels that the US would be happy with. So, what is the purpose of the additional screening in this case?
Thanks for posting the update - much appreciated. Pleased to hear your journey went smoothly and good to know your worries were unfounded.
I can't shed any light at all on your question about security checks. My instinct is that they can be triggered by any number of factors, and that one of those factors could be random selection. Nor would I take it as a given that they are mandated by US. I'v experienced them on flights to/from other destinations.
Regarding your other question (what's all the media-reported fuss about?), there are probably two separate issues. One is that the regular entry procedures on landing are not necessarily pleasant. At some airports and at certain times of day the delays can be very long. Probably no worse than for non-Europeans being processed at LHR on a busy day when Border Agency is understaffed, but even 45-50 minutes, which is not uncommon, can feel an eternity when you've come off an 11-hour flight and your body says it's 04.00h. Also, it used to be an intimidating process with hostile questioning and a suspicious manner. That's more a legacy issue, I would say. In my experience immigration officers are far more welcoming now. The separate issue is that some unlucky individuals do get subjected to a nightmare experience, detained in isolation, not allowed the communicate with the outside world, then put on a flight whence they came, with no explanation, no redress, and no way of knowing how to clear their record. Maybe - who knows? - in many cases it's justified. But in an imperfect world it can also apparently happen to ordinary people who fall victim to a bureaucratic error. Naturally this makes a tasty media story but it would be a mistake to extrapolate from individual cases to imagine it's a common experience.
I've been flying between the UK and US regularly for many years and I've concluded that there's no way for Jo Public to really know whether security checks are there to serve an effective purpose, or merely to give an illusion of security, or to maintain a heightened sense of public anxiety in order to justify a wider set of repressive measures, or to cover the authorities' asses in the event of a terrorist incident. I have my own theories but I don't really know. At the end of the day the choice is simple: either comply or don't travel. If one chooses to travel, it's best to comply with the minimum of resistance or fuss.