Having held a management position with one of these companies many years ago I know something about what goes on.

The main problem is common to the US or the UK (specifically these contractors): you pay peanuts and you get monkeys! These people are often on close to minimum wage and yet we expect them to have customer service skills, sensitivity, some awareness of what is going on in the world, etc.... For the kind of money that these companies are willing to pay, you don't really get highly qualified people.

The airlines are mandated to carry out these extra checks by the FAA (and are inspected at regular intervals - talk about a dog and pony show!). But obviously, finances being what they are, the airlines pressure the contractors to do the job with the minimum number of people and of course regularly put the contracts out to bid which further puts pressure on pay levels.

It always amazed me that security staff were in the job of actually protecting a company's assets and human lives and yet they were treated as third-class staff. If qualified staff were hired, they were given a decent wage, and appropriate training given (to both staff AND management), you would see a completely different situation. But we all know that just isn't going to happen because the cost of security would be exorbitant and it just doesn't "put bums in seats" as the expression goes.

I will finish with a (true) story that happened to me some 15 years ago at Heathrow when I was with TWA. I had a visit from the police early one morning to say that they had come to question one of my screeners from the late night shift. He had apparently wanted to inspect a passenger closely and had taken him to the nearest public lavatory to "pat" him down and inspect more closely. There really was no malicious intent and the guy was a really enthusiastic but polite young man, he just had a really strange idea of what his job entailed.....Needless to say profuse apologies were proferred (which the passenger, showing amazingly good grace accepted) and more training was given.

Then there's the one about the Nigerian we found sleeping in the x-ray machine after having missed his flight to Lagos (same check-in area)...ah but that really would be OT.