Originally Posted by
JakiChan
In fact that makes it seem like the airlines have a vested interest in the lines being long...
Probably not. The airlines don't want to have to reaccommodate pax who miss their flights due to security wait times. They also don't want to have people showing up many hours early and clogging up their checkin facilities, lounges, etc. It's unlikely that whatever little payment they may get from BAA is worth the trouble.
Wasn't the strict 1-bag rule supposed to help reduce security screening times? I really hope this doesn't mean that they're going to try to put in a "0.5 bag" rule now (i.e. shrink the allowable size significantly).
I do have to say that a 10 minute upper limit is pretty tough. I doubt many U.S. airports, even smaller ones, could meet that requirement all the time. A 5-10 minute average time and maybe a 25-30 minute max might be more reasonable based on peaks of passenger traffic at various times during the day. I'd be willing to accept that as long as there were significant consequences for exceeding the max time so that it didn't happen very often.