Originally Posted by
JSCL
Not brilliant that this happened at all, but so many people are coming out of the wood work and using terms like "passport control" and "security breach" etc.
The BBC talking head said something like "think of how many times you show a passport at an airport these days". The answer is either once or twice. Once at the check in desk and once at the gate. Or, if you check in online, just once, at the gate. That's not excessive, it's perfectly sensible (which makes me wonder why people never have it ready at the gate). There are no immigration checks on exit from the UK any more, the people at the gate are checking you can enter the next country. Security just want to see a boarding pass, they don't care who you are, they just need to know you're on a flight that day and don't have anything malicious in your hand baggage. Many people have their passport out thinking it will be checked, but it never is, yet they still think that is "passport control" and for some reason refer to it as such.
There were 3 failures at MAN, of course, the first was him getting through security without a boarding pass, however, the boy still went airside after going through the required level of checks, so he was not a threat in the way that the news will make him out to have been. The second failure was at the gate where he slipped through and the third was on board, where a simple head count would have sorted this out in about 10 minutes.