Letter in The Glasgow Herald from an airline captain:
May I use this forum to express my gratitude to the vigilant Glasgow
Airport security personnel who narrowly foiled a potentially horrible
terrorist atrocity last week.
As an airline captain I am very conscious that security is a team effort.
It's in my interest that all the links in the security chain are pulling
together in our efforts to keep the "baddies" off the aircraft. After all,
we pilots are usually the first to arrive at the scene of a crash, and that
is a fate we constantly strive to avoid. With this in mind, I naively
proceeded in uniform to my aircraft in the assumption that we crews were
"on side" with security.
Imagine, then, my horror when a sharp-eyed security person identified in my
flight bag last Friday a small bottle of Tabasco sauce (used by myself to
dull the horrors of airline catering). This item had transited security
many times over the past few months by virtue of a shocking application of
common sense and intelligent judgment by this guard's colleagues.
As I sat locked inside the flight deck with all the controls, a fire axe
and more than 100 tons of fuelled-up airliner in my hands, imagine the
chilli-based havoc I could have inflicted with this deadly substance.
Indeed, had the first officer smuggled a similar-sized bottle of ketchup
through security, the liquids could have been combined to produce a
potentially lethal barbecue marinade.
I consider the 10 minutes that the security team at Glasgow devoted to
publicly and loudly confiscating this item from my bag to have been another
minor victory in the "war on terror".
Thank heavens we are keeping our eye firmly on the ball.