Well said Mr A!
When pax take huge bags into the cabin, how often do they actually use anything in them? Medication? Of course. A book? Probably. Baby equipment? A few pax per flight.
The point is 95% of hand baggage is needless. Some UK airlines are still insisting only essentials are carried, and even then they are placed into see-through plastic bags to make security checks easier and faster.
The American carriers should be free to do what they like in their own back yard. If they don't want to do it right, more fool them. But when they fly out of the UK or Europe, Governments should be able to insist that all the time they are over our airspace, and over our potential targets, we should be able to insist what goes into the aircraft cabin.
I know that this will not eradicate the threat of terrorism, but if so many people managed to hijack so many aircraft in one go, something drastic has to be done NOW.
As for crews complaining of having equipment removed from them, I think everyone has to put things into perspective. Knives and bottle openers are needed for flights. But how many do you need? Some carriers seem to have one each. Is this neccessary? Surely one or two per flight is more than adaquate. The reason they are taken off is not because of what YOU could do with them, but what someone ELSE could do with them during the flight. I know that is obvious but some crews have had difficulty understanding it this past week.
All we need is a bit of common sense. That goes for the authorities as well as crew and staff. The checks are a pain. We all know that. But if it closes one more door, one more way that an aircraft can he hijacked, surely it has to be a good thing.
I'll just hold on tight now and wait for the backlash...