Despite numerous flights from Europe this is the first time either my wife or I transitioned AMS and all our stuff got flagged in the security line. My wife and I play a small game of 'who can choose\get put in the faster security line' so it wasn't just the employees working my line as she was in different one. While not as much as many on this forum I still fly quite a bit and have a pretty good routine for what goes where in my bags, what to wear through the scanner and what should be in my liquids bag.

Anyway - my empty pocketed jeans and collared shirt got flagged for a full pat-down. My backpack got flagged and the security screener spent an inordinate amount of time looking over my camera. Eventually he told me my solid stick of travel deodorant should have gone in my liquids bag which I thought was weird because I'd been buying that brand and placing it in the same spot for the last 5 years without issue. For my carry-on it was 8 stroopwafels in a plastic bag that got it flagged.

I thought for sure I had lost bragging rights but when I exited my wife was also exiting - having had her bag searched as well. No reason was given for her bag search but they unwrapped the two small 1"-2" tall souvenir windmills and wanted to know what they were.

I took a quick look across lines and the there seemed to be quite a few bags being checked in addition to ours so I was curious if bag searches were more common in AMS?