[QUOTE]More to the point, is there any prospect of an initiative from UK airport operators to get this archaic restrictive throwback reviewed and rescinded? There is no justification for this nonsense to continue.[/QUOTE]
Good luck with that one. I think you'll find the airports' trade body has been privately lobbying on this for years. DFT will simply say that all security measures are continually re-assessed in light of threat levels and any change will be implemented only if and when the external threat environment supports such a change being made. The UK additional measures remain in place and given that we [rightly] don't have access to the threat information which led to those measures being introduced and then retained thereafter, it's fighting a losing battle.
The commercial impact across several airports must be immense - would Emirates do Dubai-Glasgow-JFK, would Kuwait do Kuwait-MAN-Chicago and would Turkish Airlines do Istanbul-BHX-Boston - who knows? However, safety and security should never take priority over commercial requirements and so for as long as these rules are deemed necessary by the UK Government, who are we to challenge them from a position of relative ignorance?