corporate-wage-slave

Yes, the same equipment is also being under trial in LHR and AMS as well. In the case of AMS it think we can assume it will be a permanent feature.

Row9

corporate-wage-slave

I must admit the first time I came across this in AMS I found it very difficult to resist the force of habit, after retracting my laptop sometimes several times a day across Europe until one day the agents tell you to leave it in. PreCheck in the USA sometimes sees this too even though they remove larger trays to stop you from doing it. The liquid requirements were always intended to be temporary, at least as far as the European Union was concerned, until technology made it unnecessary.

flatlander

I'm glad you live in such a black and white world where the traveller is always to blame and the security staff are perfect.

So, please tell me which part of "the rules" I breached to get my bag has been pulled for secondary screening out of:

• 3-4 s-biner hooks linked together
• An asthma inhaler (in one airport, the other 30 or more distinct airports this year didn't care)
• Bunch of keys (already presented separately from other items).
• A pen (metal rollerball).
• Bag of laptop cables (already presented separately from other items).

That's just in the last week and a half of various European and Asian airports.

I'm well aware of that reasoning, but I consider it a dumb procedure for sake of procedure (just like all shoes off in US airports, instead of only those likely to be large enough to conceal something nefarious). Most other airports in the world have no problem with being able to identify where the one suspect item is, inspect it, and let you carry on. If they can't identify the one suspect item then they do search your whole bag or remove the suspect item and rescan the bag, but "what is the cylinder in the side pocket?" doesn't get you a whole search, it gets a check of just that side pocket.

orbitmic

I'm still waiting for reports of the transit fast track security being really fast! Even when I do it at really empty times, it takes 5-10 minutes whilst the O/D non fast track queue next lane is pretty empty and the Heathrow personnel keen to prevent any transit passengers from joining them for reasons unknown...

Exiting and reentering through the F wing is almost invariably faster but I try to do it as little as possible as I keep hoping that one day, BA and LHR will finally decide to sort the problem whilst if we all desert the normal transit they have reasons to feel that the problem is not so bad.

On O/D, I often do the South fast track which is usually very quick and much closer to the Tube lift so it works very well and I can then go into the CCR from the "magic" door which is a more direct route than F wing in purely "geographical" terms.

Mordac

Incidentally, while obviously this isn't practical in the UK, if you live in a country with more reasonable firearms laws, putting a gun in your checked baggage is a very good way of ensuring it doesn't get lost, as no one wants to be the person having to explain to the peelers they've lost the bag with the gun in it.

corporate-wage-slave

Well I hinted at that in my previous post: transit customers are given a different (not necessarily more severe) search due to different approaches to security and weapons in other countries. Plus numerically more people "try it on", or don't understand the signage, in Connections than Direct Entry. So if you jumped to the Direct Entry channels you are bypassing those controls. Sometimes you are allowed to go to Direct Entry but that has to be at the choice of the security staff.
And because of the previous comment about controls, which are DfT led, that is a wasted endeavour.

missdimeaner

flatlander

I had a chat with the AMS security people the other day about this (you feel like you can actually ask them about security, instead of it being likely to lead to suspicion and possibly worse in the UK), and was told they intend to upgrade all their scanners to those which allow you to leave liquids, etc, inside.

Sixth Freedom

I don't see it at T5 but the thing that really bugs me at Fast Track security at many airports is when flight crew/airport staff/wheelchair passengers all go straight to the front of the Fast Track line.

What they should actually do it go to the front of the non-Fast Track line. And if there are four of them, they should each go to the front of four separate lines...

stewardo

Maybe just my bad luck, but I don't think I've seen the automated immigration kiosks open for months and months. Perhaps they are broken?

Row9

The twist is that there were still signs telling people to take these items out of their bags! Do you have any insight on when this might be rolled-out as standard elsewhere in Europe?

corporate-wage-slave

No, I have no insight there other than two related factors are involved: this new equipment is relatively expensive and so some airports may struggle to pay for it unless they are high wage locations (such as AMS and LON); and secondly unless you have all / almost all locations using the equipment it becomes difficult to give nationwide travel preparation advice, let alone pan European advice. MME can't afford a Millimetre Wave scanner so it's not easy to resolve.

orbitmic

Thanks - sorry missed that. That said, it needn't be wasted behaviour in that they could still ascribe more channels to fast track security (the most common is only 2, sometimes 1 or 3) which would still speed things up even with more thorough controls, or thinking more creatively, they could find ways of segregating arrivals from safe and unsafe origins and maybe in its great wisdom the DfT would at least remove the constraint from those arriving from the former. The risk of someone arriving from Israel with a gun on them is probably not very high and I suspect that the DfT civil servants know it and may be willing to consider that risks are unequal (the risk that they arrive with a full bottle of water is, but that would be picked up by the "regular" control).

Blumie