ThatT1Feeling

The OP will be proud of me this evening. Normally I am a tray stacker, but I have been known to sin sometimes

This evening I ensured that I took both trays into the middle packing area, then slid both of them into the tray remover in the middle of that area. Every little helps.

rcspeirs

Dave Noble

I am not employed by Heathrow Airport - I do not have a job there ( or any airport )

If the airport cannot afford to employ enough staff to handle the running of its security checkpoints, perhaps it could invest in equipment that means that people do not need to take laptops , liquids etc out of the bags and can simply screen the bags as is - then there would be no need to worry about the trays since there would be a lot less trays used

catandmouse

1) Each airport (I was going to write each country) has its own processes and procedures. Shoes on/off, belts on/off, laptops in/out, liquids in/out, trays stacked/not stacked. It's all but impossible for a normal traveller to remember the specifics in each airport.
2) The whole system seems to be designed for people with more than 2 hands. If I had extra hands I might manage to carry my carry-on and trays to an area where I can re-pack in peace.

notakeenflyer

Kind of like AMS does? I was surprised coming out of there last week and they told me to leave everything in my backpack - laptop, ipad, phones, headphones, liquids, whatever. Everyone did have to go through the nudey scanner though.

A P Yu

'Please' suggests its a request

Quote:

Originally Posted by chongcao

HAL did not employee anyone to do the job for you.

Yeah but I think they should

Quote:

Originally Posted by chongcao

By doing your own job it actually speed up the security check process by keeping trays flowing back to the unpacking area.

My Job? Its not my job. I don't go to an airport, and pay to use their facilities and services, and then end up doing a job / working.
Also, speeding up security is not my job.

Neither is loading my luggage in the hold, tagging my own luggage, moving the jetty, driving the tug etc.

Dave Noble

There are a fair number of airports where there is no need to remove things, but just put the bag onto the conveyor. Only where there are odd loose items that need to go through are trays used at all - I guess that AMS has the decent scanners that can scan without removal given that it works in that manner

pablol

itsmeitisss

Heathrow's equipment CAN see through to laptops already. You must have forgotten the fact that in spite of installing machines that can, after a few months DOT told them that laptops had to be out anyway. The liquids rule is a worldwide requirement. That is hardly HAL's fault.

LTN Phobia

I dare say not a lot are. Many are probably just slogging their way without a huge amount of brain power.

Either that, or based on the behaviour of a lot of people at airports, ther is something in the walk-through metal detector that disable brain cells.

windowontheAside

Is the liquids thing a worldwide rule? I have been through several airports where I didn't have to take them out of my bag.

And as for the trays I don't really care if it is/should be someone else's job. I don't want to spend longer in security than I have to. I'd love to say that my propensity to clear other people's trays is some kind of altruistic act, but it's entirely driven by self-interest. Anytime I see something that easy to do and helps me out (without disadvantaging others) then I'm all over it.

I think being lazy is one of my better attributes. It keeps me constantly looking for better/quicker/easier ways of doing things. I recommend it.

itsmeitisss

Anywhere going from or to the UK will definitely have it, and I haven't been to an international airport that doesn't require it. It is definitely a EU wide regulation, so while it is in place liquids will remain having to be put in a 1litre bag and separated at Heathrow and HAL aren't allowed to change this. I tend to keep mine in my coat to minimise the need to open the rollaboard.

I remember the unnecessary stick the HAL security staff were getting after the brief period of time that they didn't require laptops/tablets out when DOT required their removal at security. Some of it was unnecessarily rude and threatening. So much so I offered myself as a witness so that one guy would be prevented from travelling. Strangely he wasn't, management wouldn't stand up for the worker in the face of a violent threat. This was in the era where security staff were frequently called goons on here.

Dave Noble

DOT does not have anything to say about travel that is not to the USA - There is a large amount of the world that is not the United States of America

Limits on liquids is a general requirement ( but not worldwide - ever taken domestic flights in Australia? ) but having to remove from bags is not a requirement

There are plenty of airports that do not require that laptops be removed amd do not require the bags of liquids to be removed

It is Heathrow Airport's role to manage its security checkpoint, not its paying customers

Globaliser

The actual liquids restriction is reasonably common worldwide, although not universal and some of the exceptions are harder to understand than others. (For example, there is no security screening at all on domestic NZ flights operated by small turboprops; and the liquids restriction applies to international flights from Australia and in a particularly stringent form to international flights to Australia, but there is no liquids restriction on domestic flights within Australia.)

Having to take liquids or tablets or even laptops out of your main cabin bag and having them screened separately is subject to much wider variations. My impression is that if you leave everything in, it makes for a "busier" picture so that the screener has to work harder to make sense of what they see. Things are more likely to be missed which ought to be looked at in greater detail by manual inspection, and bags are more likely to be pulled for time-consuming manual inspection because the machine picture leaves too many question marks. In contrast, if you take some of the "difficult" stuff out, then it's easier to clear the bag and its contents just from the machine picture - so everything works faster, consumes fewer resources, and causes fewer delays. Like most things in life, this is not binary: it's not a case of "either the machine can see through a laptop or it can't see through a laptop".

For the same reason, some of us have found that if there are other bags inside the main cabin bag which are likely to cause confusion or questions, it makes life simpler to pull them out of the main bag as well even though there isn't a specific requirement to do so. For example, a bag with two electric toothbrushes plus lots of coiled cables and adapters usually makes it through without manual inspection when it's pulled out. But sometimes when I don't, the bag goes to manual screening, often triggering a good-natured exchange about the "busyness" of my bag. (As always, if you're nice to the screeners instead of patently treating them as idiotic minions/scum/goons, you often get a surprisingly pleasant interaction with them.)

This all seems like common sense to me, but it does appear to pass other people by - particularly those who think it's mortally offensive to suggest that they should be security-screened at all, and who consider that a manual inspection of their bags amounts to grounds for starting thermonuclear war.

amt