As a frequent flyer who is naturally concerned with aviation security, I am still a little baffled by the concept of "reverse screening" (screening passengers after a flight has safely landed).

Doesn't the very fact that the flight landed without incident indicate that there were no armed terrorists onboard the plane? Perhaps I am missing something, so if anyone with a greater understanding of security procedures has any explanatory insights, I would be very interested. Thanks!

My understanding is that the intended purpose of "reverse screening" is that if there was a security breach at the originating airport before the flight left that was detected after the flight left, pax getting off the flight at the arriving airport have to be screened before continuing on to connecting flights or being let loose in the sterile area of the arriving airport. In practice, they seem to screen even people without connecting flights because of the way airports are laid out.

Most reverse screenings are due to what I consider mindless evacuations at originating airports. I don't think the recent BA incident was due to such an incident.

I think that non-connecting pax can refuse to be rescreened (in the same way they can refused to be screened at a checkpoint by not going to the checkpoint) but if they do so, they will be escorted out of the sterile area by LEOs.

We had a bomb threat called in on a flight that was actually landing at my airport. What happened was they isolated the aircraft at the far end of one of the taxiways and then all passengers and their carry-ons were brought into the terminal ( which I thought was pretty idiotic,boom there goes the terminal) and all passengers were rescreened there was no option to refuse. And dogs were run through the aircraft and the checked baggage.

studentff is exactly right.