American Airport Security A Laughing Stock!

[Covenant]

Not Yank bashing

NX211
Good post; I fully agree with you. However, if we are to address the problems in any area of our lives, we cannot do it by ignoring the deficiencies. There are deficiencies in the security system at PHL that I recognise and feel I should point out on this forum.

There are also problems with what I see as a general tendency at the moment at US borders to be over-zealous with security and to treat all passengers as little more than criminals. This may appear to some as a distasteful but necessary part of increased security, but I beg to differ.

I don't think I'm being self-righteous. There are many things that are wrong with Britain. The NHS is an obvious one that comes to mind, and if this were a forum about health issues, I would be spending my time criticising the health shambles in the UK. However, this is a forum about air travel, and this thread concerns air security, which is an area where I believe the USA could learn from the UK and other nations.

One of the privileges of having lived for a significant time on both sides of he Atlantic is that I feel somewhat qualified to look at both American and British society with a degree of objectivity - or at least with some knowledge of both. I certainly don't intend to demean Americans or the USA in general. We should all be big enough to take criticism without feeling threatened by it.

I stand by my assertion. I find it unlikely that the woman at the centre of this controversy would have been treated in the same way had the episode occurred in a British airport. There is no implied criticism of Americans in general here, nor is there a suggesiton that we British are any better than you. It is simply a statement that I think few people would disagree with: that American security officials tend to go about their job with a little more force and a little less courtesy than do their British counterparts.

I don't think either way leads to more effective security either (in any case, that is a separate issue), but I do think that the British way is less likely to put an innocent traveller through law-enforcement hell, as this woman claims she was.