From Nov 6, CPH is changing procedures:

If you alarm the WTM you'll have to go back and send your footwear through the x-ray. The reports don't specify if it is then enough to go through WTM a second time (provided you don't alarm again) or if you still have to be patted down.

The airport rep does specify though that they know that the two things people complain most about at their checkpoints is beings touched and having to open carry-on.

Hoping this is in order to avoid some pat-downs.

They expect around 5% passengers will have to go back and put shoes through, and they are currently installing benches at the checkpoint (they already have decent packing space right next to the belts).

I stopped flying in hiking boots after two successive patdowns at CPH, clearly the boots were to blame for the alarm. Do you have special footwear that you prefer through security?

DanishFlyer

CPH has instituted the "random" alarming at the WTMD approach and started to make a lot more fuss about what is inside carry-on bags. I hope this is not permanent but I suspect I will be disappointed by some aspect of what is in the plan.

Alarm, made-up or on metal, then patdown still.

I had some shoes that alarmed the WTMD, so I used to take them off everywhere. I imagine some FTers will have mistaken me for American when I did it in Europe ;D

That was YOU?!



If you were wearing Aerosole ballet flats, I completely understand. Those $29 shoes were no bargain because they alarmed WTMD all over the place. I tossed them and am back to wearing my beloved GEOX ballet flats instead which are WTMD safe. You should try them.

I'm a bit too male for ballet flats

OP asked for suggestions of favoured footwear which doesn't alarm the WTMD. I'm offering up a stylish, extremely comfortable, non-alarming option. And I promise that I wouldn't chuckle if I saw you (and OP) wearing them at the checkpoint; I'd think that you were wise and stylish people.

I was removing shoes back in the early 1990s when flying in business clothing from CMH - my dress oxfords always set off the WTMD there, and it was easier just to put them through the x-ray. I always hoped that a first-time passenger behind me would watch and do the same.

While we could still wear shoes through the WTMD in the US, I experimented with several styles and brands. At the time, New Balance 409 cross trainers worked good. I would get the black ones and they even look like casual shoes and not sneakers. They also do not have metal eyelets. I still use them and buy new ones when they wear out, but I have not been able to "test" them for some time now. Many dress shoes and hikers have steel shanks.

Am I the only one who remembers the machines in shoe shops in America to test if they were 'airport checkpoint safe'? I think that they may have been in Rockport stores. It wasn't that long ago, perhaps early to mid part of the last decade, just before the shoe carnival began.