and what i am saying is that the new standard may include skymarshals, which knowing the declining state of the UK military, they might not have been in a position to have on the aircraft immediately. Or maybe the UK gov't initially said "No security on our aircraft, it's not necesary" To which Uncle Sam said, "righto then, its not necesary for you to fly here."
It may well be that countries with more lax airport security have better ONBOARD security, which is what it is going to take to stop this sort of thing. I suspect that the FAA has looked at the weapons involved and said HOLY****, there is no way to keep these off the aircraft, and have come to the hard realization that onboard security is going to need to be beefed up. Indeed the weapons used in this attack are used in PRISONs every day where the populations are totally controlled and strip searched at length without troubling things like civil liberties. Prisoners are always stabbing each other, if we can't keep the knives out there, we haven't got a chance in the free and open society.
Also, if it was the airport we would be talking about the ground security. I think because it is specific AIRLINES and not SPECIFIC AIRPORTS, that are the subject of the bans we are talking about inflight security, not ground security. Maybe it was as simple as BA saying, "No we don't want to lock the cockpit door, our pax like the view, and the crew likes to talk to the pax.
We don't have all the answers, but protectionism is certainly not the case here.