Couldn't sympathise with you more there silverknapper. Liverpool has to be the worst passenger experience in the UK for security, I observe something I find completely unacceptable virtually every time I go there.

Security
 

Have just completed a trip around the world as SLF with She Who Must Be Obeyed. Hand luggage included a back pack with two camera bodies, assorted lenses, batteries, memory cards, chargers and leads. This pack regularly travels with me long and short haul.

SWMBO is an attractive middle aged woman. Her hand baggage, as usual, contained liquids properly packed and sized as per the rules, a Kindle an Android tablet and an i-Pad. She also wears ear rings in pierced ears, a watch with metal wristband and a bracelet, the last two go in the x- ray tray.

This is how we fared:

Shannon: polite staff, no queries re camera gear, no problems. Standard for Shannon, sometimes get comments on my 500mm lens from screeners interested in photography. No problem for SWMBO

Heathrow T3: Rudely told by male security while in the line that my back pack looked heavy and it must be unpacked for x-ray. When I pointed out it weighed just 7 kg to meet cabin baggage limits for some of the airlines we would be travelling on and it was camera gear, was told all items needed individual x-ray as lenses often don't show up if packed together. This is a new one on me. Regularly transit T5 and T1 with little bother other than brusque or rude staff. Result, a long delay as I had to unpack, causing the line to be held up plus delay and annoyance due to repacking. Wife singled out for thorough explosive sniffer test.

There were three staff with clip boards overseeing this machine and the one adjacent. A case of cause and effect?

Hong Kong: Polite but wife's small ear rings set off arch alarm. Subjected to wand check by a male. No pat down as no female staff close by.

Singapore: No problems. Polite and efficient

Melbourne: No problems.

Alice Springs: No problems.

Cairns: Wife given wand check even though arch did not sound alert. Male staff and very chatty.

Sydney: No problems.

Australian airports generally seemed alert, friendly and efficient. Guess the guy at Cairns was bored.

Auckland: No problems on two trips through security. Wife left Kindle in bag in error on one trip. Not queried.

Rarotonga: Extremely slow due to only one machine for a full B777. Had to open camera bag after x-ray but didn't have to unload.

Orlando: No problems other than slow lines.

Regularly use US airports and the much maligned TSA seem to be getting more polite. IAH is particularly pleasant when boarding for London.

Having spent much of the 1990s organising and running aviation security conferences sponsored by governments, the equipment manufacturers and the airline industry, I find the attitude of the security staff at UK airports generally rates from poor to appalling. If you ask a question, query a decision or are overheard commenting to a fellow traveller about your experience, you are immediately treated with suspicion and singled out for special treatment. It seems to me that some staff make things up as they go along knowing that they have the whip hand.

Flyray, the "liquid" rules most emphatically do apply to pilots. They apply equally to everyone.

The definition of "liquid" is interpreted by these drones in a very creative way too - lasagne for instance, or solid mascara. At my airport (LTN) one of my colleagues had his rice pudding confiscated but the risotto got through. Figure that one out! We simply aren't dealing with normal intellects here.

Wageslave,

The liquid rule for OPERATING crew has been waved by all EU countries, and most of the World EXCEPT by the idiots in the UK.

Wageslave I walked through security this morning with a 2ltr bottle of diet coke in my bag in an EU airport, didn't even have a local security pass.

The ground handler was given 2 big bags of shopping for the FO's Mrs of local produce. Which got delivered to his hand at the aircraft.

Its only in the UK you get this nonsense.

The rule states that liquids have to be packed in containers of 100ml or less. I'd say that in this case the "idiot" was right and that you misunderstood what's allowable and what isn't.

Few years ago in MAN, put EVERYTHING on the belt.
After l go through personnel screener security guy asks where my ID is.
Told him its just about to come through on the tray in Xray screener.
Gives me loud spray on the fact that if l go through screening, l must have an ID on.
Half way through his rant l noticed he didn't have an ID displayed.
When he finished, l asked him where his ID was?
Flustered, he then challenged me to 'Who do you think you are.....?'
I called for the supervisor, as l collected my belongings, had my ID back on and he gets a bollocking from the supervisor.
Small victory.

halas

100ml is a pretty small crew bottle. :cool:

Keeping in mind that the pilots have control of the airplane with a crash axe in the cockpit, one can come to the obvious conclusion that there are, indeed, an overabundance of idiots making the rules. Any other conclusion is not worthy of consideration by reasonable and logical-thinking people.

Glad to be an airline retiree...

Ltr of Apple juice, and a pepper and ham salad in that white sauce stuff today. Through without a word.

The issue is that every aircraft that arrives in the UK the crew will be able to take what ever fluids they like on. And they will be able to interact with ground handlers and do aircraft swaps etc.

Its only UK pilots boarding that have these restrictions. And there is nothing stopping them going ground side then clearing security with fluids once they are away.

So it's completely pointless.

I can believe someone getting their fruit juice past security but a jock eating salad, that's pushing the boundaries a bit.

You should come down to Somerset and try some of our special apple juice, a few litres of that and you'll be fighting with the security staff.

last time I drank Rattler in Cornwall I lost 3 hours of memory not a thing remembered after the first pint apart from having to run to the bog with a wet fart brewing while the second one was pulled.. And I was right, it was more an acidic waterfall than a fart.

And the bread is mankie as hell here and the salad after you chuck a can of sweet corn in it, is the least of a bad option as long as you don't get by mistake the fish salad. And there have been a fair few of them been dumped in FOD buckets until I sussed out the local lingo for fish. The pickled herring salad is particularly vile, but well worth dipping the FO's mic sock in before dumping it.

Hi Jock
 

Wow you only lost three hours, that's a result most people including myself could record the memory loss on a calendar not a watch. Fish and salad leaves should never appear in the same dish though the first officer mic sock trick sounds pretty evil but funny. Keep enjoying the non fishy salads MJ though the special white sauce sounds a bit suspect.

there was no green ****e involved.

Its bits of smoked peppered ham chopped up with green and red peppers also diced with some sauce holding the whole lot together. Its bit like potato salad in the UK. Its ok with a bit of the local enliven bread to dip in it with a bit of humus.

One of the other Jock skippers had the same idea when he got the fish option by mistake, he went for dipping the end of the FO's pen in it while he was doing the walk round filling up the bic cap with the rancid crap.

The post top of climb fuel check and suck on pen produced quite a spectacular CRM incident involving 5 mins of pilot incapacitation due to uncontrollable laughter.

Funny enough we hadn't even discussed this practise with each other it was just instinct that it need to be done.

That's the sort of sadism normally reserved for the military, have you served in the past or is it a jock thing? Bloody funny all the same. I don't know where exactly you fly from but I have spent several months in Northern Norway with the military in the past and the local fish based cuisine was stinking, thankfully the military brought in their own food. One of this lads had a winter wife who was a horror and stank of fish but she was loaded as her family owned the local fish processing plant so she could afford drinks in the local bars and she used to taxi the boys around in a plush merc so happy days I suppose.

Aye both ex sappers. He was a POM though so thick as tar.

I have been up there and its rank.

In that case kudos to you both, I guess that the leasson for your F/Os is to buy a pen with a clicky button on the top and ditch the mic sock.

Stanstead Screening Nazis
 

I don't quite understand why the rules about 'excess' liquids apply to pilots, they are charged with the safety of the aircraft and could do far more damage using the aircraft itself than with 101ml of explosives!!!!

Job security
 

This my friends, is what we in the VIP end of the industry, call job security. Our passengers drive right to their aircraft, spend crazy amounts of money for this privilege and so we keep our jobs!:ok:

This my friends, is what we in the VIP end of the industry, call job security. Our passengers drive right to their aircraft, spend crazy amounts of money for this privilege and so we keep our jobs!:ok:


Which is not true anymore as the same rules are applied to Pax on private flight aswell on more or less each Airport in the EU :{

Err, don't think so.