Security??
 

Througout the time that increased security has been in place, items have still continued to go missing from passengers' luggage. It would therefore seem likely that if someone can steal a video camera from someones luggage, for example, as happened to a friend somewhere between the US and the UK (airside) then it would not be that difficult for the same people to get other items as required past the current security barriers.

Wanna hear something REALLY scary?

The security industry is now SERIOUSLY suggesting that aircrew will not be allowed to have their families on board the same aircraft...period...and that includes pilot's wives that may be cabin crew and are rostered together for the sake of actually getting to see one another often enough to contemplate having a relationship.

Now if they were holding your 10 year old outside the door with a knife to her/his throat you might open the door...that is the latest fear...wives might be a waste of a sharp knife however:E

I kid you not...this is coming to an airport near you....anyone think that might unite the pilot body against this security madness?

The money wasted on security that could be better spent on intelligence is just amazing.

Once again, folks, 'Chirp' are active on the crew screening issue (see latest issue) and would like your reports.

What you need is your wife or kids sitting somewhere that the terrorist can't get at them, somewhere with an armoured and locked door that can only be opened from the inside. Can anyone think of a place like that on the aircraft?

Highly annoying, but why do you NOT think this is anything but entirely sensible??

Because we're adults

Hey wait theres more.... Body Cavity Searches starting at the end of the year... pardon the pun

Let the dft know what you think about their idiotic practices.

Pick an email address: http://www.dft.gov.uk/pgr/aviation/emailcontacts

It's not hard............ (just a little brave)

Back in my mid-teens, I was thoroughly read up on the encyclopedia articles on nitroglycerine and other things that go bang.

The early railroad cuttings were blasted with nitro. The major problem was transport of the stuff as it has a tendency to go boom at the slightest shock. Nitro carriers were required to display a signal flag so that other workers could give them a wide berth.

Later practice was to mix the stuff on the spot, sometimes even in the blasting hole.

Mixing the stuff together requires transport of nitric acid -- quite nasty stuff that I would not want on my person as well as temperature control -- security and cabin crew are advised to be extremely vigilant for ice buckets and cooler packs:eek:

Nitro is today available by prescription in small capsules for heart patients, but I have not heard of any such patients suddenly vaporising:\

But who knows what could happen when you get a few score rickety HPs extracting the nitro from their little capsules to get enough together for a big bang:uhoh:

Oops!!
 

I went through security at a certain UK airport last Thursday forgetting completely that I had a toilet bag with aftershave, toothpaste, mouthwash, etc. in my overnight bag (hand baggage). Normally I have checked baggage which contains the toiletries but, as this was only a one-nighter, I only had one cabin-sized bag. So no clear plastic bag routine: overnight bag through the scanner & not a word from the security bods about the liquids.
Amazingly enough, I similarly overlooked the toiletries when passing through the scanners at the European airport on the way back and, guess what? Not a peep from the scanners nor any word from the staff.
Now, what therefore is the point of all this liquids in clear plastic bags b0ll0x? If I had been a terrorist chappie.....?? Doesn't exactly fill one with confidence, does it? :confused:

Maybe if we all filled up the mailbox at [email protected] they might get the message ;)

Exactly!

This is the exact method lobby and pressure groups use to show their disgust at something. Please realise that this is one of the best methods to get your voices heard these days.

It will take between 3-5 minutes to write an experience or view and press the send button....do it!

Although I no longer fly multi-crew aircraft, as a passenger it concerns me greatly that the stress of heavy-handed and frankly absurd 'security' screening conducted on law-abiding aircrew by some lowest of the food chain bottom-fondling idiot will lead to distraction and, ultimately, to a serious incident or accident.

I was horrified to read those accounts in CHIRP which thudded onto my doormat today.

The DfT are responsible for this nonsense; you can complain to them at http://www.dft.gov.uk/about/complaints . I hope you all will!

Dukes of Hazard
 

I think nitroglycerine that was mentioned earlier couldn't possibly get as far a security check without going off. If you remember Bo and Luke Duke always had to be mega careful when lifting it from the trunk of their Dodge Charger, prior to blowing it up with the help of their cross-bow and sticks of dynamite.:}

As someone who has to endure security several times during my 12 hour shift I can sympathise with flt crews, especially when they take my 250ml bottle of water from me and yet the vehicle I am driving could have over 800 of the same sealed in the back to be put on an a/c!
Just a thought but could someone not start a petition on the government website similar to the one that got so much media attention to do with road pricing and then let us all know through this site when it is ready so we could all add our voices.
As I say, the road pricing petition made the main TV news plus all the daily papers. It just need's someone to start it off and I am afraid I am not up to the task but I am sure one of our more educated pilots could do it in a few minutes.
Maybe it will be the voice we all need?:ugh:

Just typed up one now, and it will take a day to be approved. Once it has i will post the link and i hope we can perhaps make some ripples in the waters that be?

Have just had a little bit of a "D'oh" moment however.

After spell checking the main body of text i have forgotten to spell check the heading :ooh:

So instead of asking to realax the current rules on air side pass holders carrying liquids i've spelt carring.

Been a long day in my defence! :sad:

I just read news that the EU Parliament might take a stand against a prolongation of the liquids rule. They reason that there is no evidence that the liquid ban/screening has prevented any act of terrorism and that the cost (apparently for disposal of all the liquids surrendered at checkpoints) is too high.
The same news said that it's mainly the UK government that opposes less stringent rules and the MEP interviewed suggested that the UK make their own rules if they feel like it but let the rest of Europe revert to sensible security checks.

(Even now the UK apparently does not excercise the option that allows a little less stringent screening of crews.)

If the UK are so fixed on dealing with passengers and liquids at security, who screens and checks liquids that get transported to air-side that we all buy once we've got through security? Whats stopping terrorists plotting to get a batch of "water" through this way and purchasing their own stuff once they've been through security?

Last week, they took great delight at FRA in confiscating a spanner from me. A double ended 2 and 4BA spanner - 3 inches long, 5/32 thick, 3/8 inch wide, with no sharp edges. Obviously there was a danger that I would take the aeroplane apart with it....I'm not sure who the dafter ones are - the goons implementing the searches or the fools who mandate them.
Left me with the all metal Parker ball point pen thugh,. which you could stab someone with - well, just..

:hmm:

Flew back via Arabia this weekend just passed from a small island country in the Indian Ocean. Plastic bottles of water, which had been frozen to prolong cool refreshement were confiscated, on the basis that what had been water would revert to same liquid form in turgid heat of airport.
A large party of young Russian men following through security were each allowed to take a full size umbrella on board. One presumes that, because the umbrellas had been handed out by the primary political party as election gimmicks during the run up to such an event, they were state approved?
The Russians youths, by the way, behaved with boisterous impeccability and drew attention to themselves only by favourable comparison with the almost certain behaviour of a similar group of young male weightlifter types, had they been British, English or whatever dear Gordon the Scot would call the ersazt population of that northern isle.:ugh:

Assuming I'm a "naughty" person and wish to take my "dangerous" liquid through security .........

Anyone able to tell me how putting it in a resealable clear plastic bag makes it any safer???????

Well done Girtbar, I suggest a new thread when it's done.

My funniest experience trying to carry a small bottle of liquid past security (as pax) was when I took a small spray bottle containing a hair oil. The muppet looked at it and remarked:

"This is not possible!"

I said: "It's been through before", to which he replied without thinking (cos that's not what they're paid to do):

"This is possible" :ugh:

The following is the text of a letter sent to the UK Times newspaper late yesterday, not by me; perhaps it will be used, perhaps not.



Sir,

There is a new, insidious threat to air travellers’ safety.

For most passengers,security screening is a terrible nuisance, but not a major problem. The majority only endure it a few times a year. But aircrew are subjected to exactly the same process every time they go to work. Many experience it three or four times in a single day.

According to many confidential incident reports, at many UK airports the security staff, often quite low-grade, are increasingly aggressive, hostile and rude to aircrew, and “delight” in carrying out frequent full body searches, emptying bags, and generally making life difficult. Aircrew now reach their aircraft seething with contained anger. This is dangerous enough, but the time the crew needs to settle down, and to check the aircraft and paperwork, including essential navigation notices, is also being badly eroded. It is important to understand that these reports analyse the errors that have already happened as a result of all this, and are not simply about the security staff and procedures which they describe and cite as a contributory cause.

It is an absurd regulation that requires an operating crew to be searched aggressively for the weapons needed to take control of an aircraft by foul means, when they are going to take control of it in any case five minutes later because that’s their job. The assertion that “everyone must be treated the same” is as ridiculous in its earnest stupidity as it always is, but is the only explanation advanced so far. There are many ways that the problem could be overcome without reducing aviation security standards, about which I have great experience and knowledge, by one jot.

The Civil Aviation Authority, and the Department of Transport, should not be allowed to continue down the traditional Civil Service route of masterly inaction until an accident happens and people are killed by the aviation security regulations rather than saved by them.

Well the petition is still not live, but ill check again later this evening.

cavortingcheetah's post made be think - are there any rules on frozen liquids?

I really do not know how those of you who have to work with this nonsense cope. :mad:

My two cents:

There will be an ease of the liquid rules when they are going through that 6 months review, simply because of the massive drop in tax free liquor sales. The whole plan was to get the sales up, but it failed. People don't know what is allowed and what is not, and don't bother to take the chance of losing their booze.

I heard a story a while ago where some Pakistanis desperate to come to the new motherland jumped the fence at Islamabad to climb up the landing gear bay as a B777 was getting ready for T/O.

If people that are stupid enough to think that they will survive an embarkment like this one, what is stoping Mr/Mrs terrorist to do the same thing but instead plant a magnetic explosive to the fuselage of the aircraft? :ugh:

The best thing of all Mr/Mrs terrorist will not even have to die do get the message accross.

All these morons who invent these rules should be send to the gulags indefinately.

Now that you're here - more BAA security nonsense
 

Interesting observation from Sir Michael Bishop (BMI) that there may indeed be a mathematical relationship between the number of security staff on duty at any one time, and the amount of time pax are asked to be at the airport (ie. shopping in a revenue rich environment) to clear the unacceptable security lines. Thank goodness BAA shopping and security staff rostering are completely decoupled activities.

More here;

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/to...cle1739175.ece

Indeed they must be.

Security. Constant staff shortages, the ones who are there are often plonkers, complete jobsworth attitude, never any managers apparent, half or more the security stations usually closed, etc. Problems invariably blamed on the time it takes to get security clearance for staff.

Airside retail. Never any staff shortages, staff always pleasant and polite, no jobsworth attitudes, adequate number of managers on hand, shops never closed due to staff shortage. Seemingly no problem in getting security clearance for staff (which, as they are airside, is the same as for their security counterparts)

The Times picks up the story.
 

Well well PPRUNE gets mentioned in The Times no less about this.....

http://travel.timesonline.co.uk/tol/...cle1738277.ece

Security No liquids over a tiny volume, must be in container in stupid plastic bags if under that volume. ( How does that bag make a container safe when it is unsafe it not in the bag?)

Airside retail Any volume of liquids packed in any size of bottle, crated and taken airside via a cursory check by the same bottom-feeders who man the human security channels, no thorough check on contents (any check at all?) and then sold to compulsorily liquid-less passengers, aircrew and ground staff at extortionate prices.

Passengers and crew can then take these large, more or less unchecked containers on to the aircraft, as many as they can stagger on board with. So can all airside ground-staff with a reason for going into the cabin, ie cleaners, dispatchers, station staff etc etc.

All in the name of windfall profits for retailer's and airport owner's shareholders? How cosy, and how ineffective against terrorists.

At last a use for all those shampoos and gels we've been nicking from the hotel for years, I would think at least 4 in the flight bag each and every time we go through security would get the message accross. Should always carry them in case of unscheduled night stop!!!!

Hotel shampoo
 

I am sure that there are security people who would be only to happy delay both you and the rest of the crew while they turn your bag inside out looking for your tricky substance's (providing of course a. they see them b. that they can be bothered to join in the fun):D

The criminal record check is the same, but there's a CTC check as well by Police / SO15 / MI5 for security staff which takes far longer

A friend of mine recently had a small bottle of liquid (shower gel or similar) confiscated by one of these anti-aircrew agents. When he asked why he wasn't allowed t take it through he was told:

"You can't take anything through that might enable you to take over the aircraft."

His reply: "I intend to take over the aircraft, i'm the ***king Captain" :D

The whole thing is beyond a joke now, there seems to be no consistency in the checks i go through every day. Virtually stripping the fillings out of my teeth to ensure i have no metal on my person, doesn't set the machine off one day but does the next! Sometimes it's shoes off, sometimes it isn't. Sometimes the security guy's are overbearing, jumped up, Hitler-style muppets and ............sometimes they're worse. :ugh:

Guys we are not alone in knowing this is absurd. Watch and enjoy these 30 second videos:

Airport security 1
Airport security 2

We need to start writing to our MPs. This is not politics, it's just nonsense.

Moderators, PLEASE can we have our own Airport Security forum on PPruNe.

Its gone on for long enough now, time these rules were relaxed.

First clip - that's the message the DfT are refusing to accept.
Second clip - hilarious and just about sums up the warped thinking behind the current regulations.:D

When I went through security at chrismas time at Manchester I had 3 medicine liquids with me which I put in the small plastic bag but was surprised as no-one wanted to check what they were and the doctors letter I had with me wasn't asked for either.

But on the other hand there were people going around saying that we had to declare our lippy and mascara etc otherwise that would be taken of us!

:rolleyes: :ugh: :rolleyes:

Security measures such as these are not designed to withstand scrutiny by sane, professional people (who can rip the logic behind them apart). They exist solely to make it appear to the general foolhardy public that the government is doing something about the threat and is only reacting to a definite (debatable) threat.

Airport Security Game: http://www.shockwave.com/gamelanding...tsecurity.jsp#