Originally Posted by
travelinmanS
It’s not the same at all. You could have cleared security in HKG and went to Mannings in the terminal and bought 10 bottles of water for your flight with no issue getting on the plane with them.
At SIN (Like KUL) and a few other airports the security is done at the gate rather than a centralized location. This means if you buy water at a store in the departure terminal it will be confiscated at the gate. Thankfully they have gotten rid of this at the gate security at T4.
The HKG setup is pretty standard for international to international transit anywhere in the world. The SIN at the gate security is unique.
I haven't flown from HKG to the US in a while, but I recall the secondary checks at the gate didn't tolerate liquids (
if they looked hard enough...). In that sense it was effectively SIN/KUL-style security.