I think we need to make a difference between those who are employed to execute what ever the regulators deem necessary and the regulators themselfs.
My personal experience at my home airport, where I pass security several time per day, has been quite positive with regards of the people employed and their attitude towards us. I feel treated like one professional who is dealing with another. After a while you will get to know them and it was not a few weeks ago where we all were present for the retirement of one of their nicer people. So I do not think that universally security people are mindless drones who simply love to exercise their powers.
Having said that, I do recall experiences elsewhere which have been nothing short of harassment and fully would correspond to some of the things you guys have been experiencing. Like any other form of customer service disasters, they need to be addressed and dealt with.
The other and in my view significant part of the issue however are not the workerbees at the airports, but the regulators who have brought the current situation upon us.
It is not the airport staff I hold grudges against, because they are there to do a job. However, I resent, dissent and generally disagree with the fact that the regulators worldwide have
- without any credible reason declared the men and women whom they do trust with flying airplanes for a living, thereby forming the backbone of todays air transport business, as a whole and without exception as terrorist suspects.
- have given terrorist organisations the very victory they wished to achieve by their stupid and senseless acts, namely to have a profound and enduring effect on hindering us, their victims, to live our lifes and earn our livelyhood in a normal environment.
- have repeatedly and keep on harassing, accusing and generally suspecting every single air traveller in this industry of the intent to comit serious crimes.
Let's face it. One single individual or a very low number of individuals who come up with a supposed terrorist plot will therefore have power over millions of travellers, flight and ground crew, even if their "plots" are absolutely half baked and not in any way workable, such as the "liquid" rules which followed a plot which has been proven to be highly theoretical and unlikely to succeed.
That, I feel, is totally unacceptable.
Unfortunately, people once again have proven to be able to adapt to these "safety" rules with the energy of sheep. What would have been needed, at the time, is a world wide stand off against this. Passengers, Crews and Ground Staff alike. If you don't trust us, we won't fly. If you treat us like criminals, we will not fly. If we have to hand in our honor and dignity in order to be admitted to the high security facility which our airplanes have become, we will not fly.
I am not talking nor asking to abolish security checks altogether. But we need to come back to some sort of sanity in this, particularly where crew are involved. Anyone who will screen pilots to their underpants and thereafter lets them actually fly something much more effective than a genuine weapon needs to have his head examined. Make up your mind. If air crew are this much suspect, they can't operate airplanes. We need to ground the industry and let Al Quaeda and friends claim the unconditional victory over the population of this world.
Or we take a step back in this time of mass hysterics and come to the agreement that air crew are amonst the people which hold one of the highest sense of honor, comitment and dedication to their jobs and to aviation as such and therefore stop their shizophrenic suspicion of all of us.
We should not even think that regulators will relent to this without massive pressure. And it is more than questionable if there will be enough people to be willing to but their careers on the line for this. But like Ben Franklin said it, anyone who is willing to give up essential liberties and their dignity for a little supposed temporary security deserves neither.