Originally Posted by
KelvinD
Just heard a couple of aviation "experts" on Radio 4. God save us from experts!
One antipodean lady claimed that "an explosion against the skin of the aircraft in the passenger cabin would cause "massive decompression"; and I thought there was decompression and not-decompression and now we seem to have grades of decompression.
In my opinion, there are more than one sort of decompression when looking at the immediate effects and results. I'd rather have a slow leak then a ecplosive decompression.
I wonder how much we have collectively forgotten about security. In the 1990s it was routine at Frankfurt airport to have your lap top tested for chemical residues, vapours etc, followed by an instruction to switch it on to demonstrate to the police officer that it really is a computer.
Similarly, when travelling by ferry or train from UK to France, it was a common occurrence to be pulled over by a police officer (on the UK side). The usual routine was for the officer to put on a pair of nice white cotton gloves and run his hand all over various surfaces of the car, inside and out. The gloves would then go into the office and into a machine for analysis. One doesn't see this sort of thing any more.
Finally, I wonder how the airlines will react when a laptop goes missing? The standard response is that they are not responsible for valuable items stored in hold baggage.
In the '90's there were far fewer passengers, let alone passengers with laptops, ipads, ebookreaders, etc. I wonder if with todays numbers it would be feasible to physically check each and every item on each and every passenger and still have a functional airport.
As crew I get "swabbed" routinely at my home airport instead of having to go through the x ray with my stuff, but the process (machine) is soooo slow. Besides that, allthough they won't gie exact details, the (automatic) screening of the hold bagage is so accurate it can detect traces of "bad" stuff a lot quicker and more reliable then a person behind a screen at a security checkpoint.