I remember in the mid-eighties well before this 9/11 security hysteria, there were trained professional Airport Police with steely eyes better than your best x-ray machine or metal detector; If something looked suspicious they would put you through the same type of examining that everyone without exception has to face nowadays, but it was a rare occasion all in all. I believe those guys had a lot of training and were backed with years of experience, and that surely costs money.
In the age of fast food, you also have fast security: cheap half-baked employee ready to be used (and discarded) at will. Airport Authorities are like “I’ll have a dozen of those and… a couple of that ones too” “would you like coriander sauce with your order sir?”
This is completely irrational… are people stripped searched before boarding a train, a bus or the tube? Yet everyone still take the risk of travelling on them, day in day out. This logic is inverted as it would make all the sense if it was the actual Capt of a flight to demand that his PAX are screened for safety reasons, not the other way around.
GD&L