This just adds confusion as to the purpose of all this.
The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me.
These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag. This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.
It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
Correct. In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.
TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests
"In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."
I find it interesting to contrast this with my experience flying out of China. I was taken to a private room and shown the digital colored X-ray of my bag on which a box had been drawn around an empty lighter, I was asked to remove it myself and hand it over, and I went on my way. All in under 5 minutes, no pat down, no fuss, and no one physically rifled through my belongings. (Granted I was a tourist so that might well not be typical.)
I'm not sure what their success rate is when tested by professionals but the experience definitely left me wondering WTF the deal with the TSA is.
A lighter is very different from a weapon. I'm sure they can see everything they need to see with X-rays. Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist? (I'm assuming you are white or asian.)
I've never had a bad experience with TSA but I hate taking off my shoes and all. I really question the value of those security measures.
I haven't had any particularly bad experiences with the TSA either but I have been physically searched a few times. The entire process is definitely slower and more involved. The contrast of that coupled with the published failure statistics just leaves me wondering. I'd rather we got rid of them but if we must keep them I think we could do at least a bit better.
I routinely conceal large bottles of liquids on my person while going through airport security. I've probably gone through airport security in various places with a 1.5L bottle of water more than a hundred times now. Haven't been caught once, although of course the US-style scanners could presumably defeat this.
Same with hot sauces, perfume and the occasional bottles of wine. I really don't like to travel with a checked-in luggage, so this is a frequent problem.
Luckily I own lots of Rick Owens clothes with large hidden pockets.
On the other hand, one can also question if the £16 cost for the flight makes any sense. A more correct price would be £500. It's about time that the airlines pay the same taxes for fuel as everyone else.
Even in your own car dropping off your friends or family at a UK airport (at least the London ones) requires paying a £6 fee now. Just to get to the dropoff area, even for 30 seconds as you say.
Price of water from water fountain (to be found on basically any western airport and most non-western I've ever been to) - 0.
I get your approach, but say where we live (Switzerland) if you have something not tightly around your body like a fleece jacket, you have to take it off and put it through scanner, this is default. Sometimes they still ask me to go down to t-shirt even if its obvious I don't have anything in pockets.
Not worth the hassle for something that is mostly free and probably healthier compared to plastic bottles stored god knows where and how long. I'd imagine if they catch you, you are going for more detailed inspection since its obvious you didn't forget 1kg bottle in clothing you wear by accident.
Yeah it’s got out and out criminal at this point. Not sure why we should accept a £6.40 charge to drop someone or collect someone from an airport when that’s the actual function and necessity of using an airport. I got charged £100 at COUNCIL OWNED Manchester airport for picking up a friend who accidentally had put themselves in the drop off zone rather than the collect zone. Just completely vile and disgusting corporatism at every single level.
When people say "water" here I have to assume they mean "vodka". Otherwise you can just bring an empty bottle and fill it on the other side. It's the toiletries that pose a problem.
Disappointingly, in my case it's usually just water. I'm walking towards security with my bottle, I can either slip it in my pocket or put it in a bin. Not throwing it away saves a bit of time and quickly becomes the default choice.
> In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater.
This matches my experience. I recently flew out of a small airport that flies 2 fairchild metro 23 turboprop planes up to 9 passengers. There were four TSA agents to check the 5 of us that were flying.
You gotta love the TSA. They serve no real purpose, but its a monster too big to kill, staffed by people who desperately cling to the notion they're doing something important.
They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that), they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber), they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
They do however cost the govt a lot of money, keep a lot of expensive-machine-makers, and in business, improve shampoo sales at destinations, waste a lot of passenger time and so on.
The grunts working for TSA on the floor at airports aren't desperately clinging for the notion that they're doing something important, or working towards some lofty, noble, and/or altruistic goal.
It's just a job.
They're principally motivated to do this job by the promise of a steady paycheck and decent benefits -- the same motivation that most other people with steady paychecks and decent benefits also have.
In my experience many of them do feel like they're doing something important, and some seem principally motivated to do the job by the promise of being able to bully travellers.
> They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that)
9/11 also stopped all future hijackings. Up to that point passengers were trained that if they stayed calm they would likely survive. Now? Short of the hijackers getting guns on the plane, passengers will absolutely fight back.
> they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber)
Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
When flying international in to the US, we literally all stand in long lines watching the TSA agents. TSA serves as the introduction to America...
I can't think of another country where the personnel aren't groomed and 'height / weight proportionate'.
The only reason you believe aircraft bombings aren't being stopped is because you live in a world where rigourous security has stopped all aircraft bombings.
Yeah. The "security theater" absolutely does play its part in stopping attacks. Without it, airplanes would be an extremely easy target for any nutjob to commit mass murder in. They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic. Over past few decades many airliners have crashed because out of control fire in the cabin / cargo hold. I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
> Without it, airplanes would be an extremely easy target for any nutjob to commit mass murder in.
They still are, but I'm not comfortable spelling out details. The 95% TSA failure rate should lead you to this conclusion naturally.
> They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic.
People have plenty of such things with them as it currently stands. Plenty more can be trivially brought on board in a checked bag or even pocket. But again I'm not going to spell it out.
> I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
Well that's unfortunate because it already is. I think the primary things protecting passengers are the cost of entry (the true nutjobs don't tend to be doing so well financially) and the passengers themselves. Regarding the latter, the shoe bomber was subdued by his fellow passengers.
Did you drop a sarcasm tag? Anyone can make a fire on a plane as they allow lighters on a plane, and batteries, and any number of flammable objects. None of that is facing any scrutiny nor stopping crazy people from being crazy.
I've heard that cell phones often catch fire on planes, and the crews know how to deal with that. I guess they have to because the odds of one going up are pretty good across so many flights.
Trains are a much easier target in most countries. Generally only the high-speed / cross border ones have any security at all. Until maybe 10 years ago you didn't even really need a ticket to get access to one (now ticket barriers are common).
Those tend to have extremely limited usefulness. Good enough to assassinate a single person at point blank range before they catastrophically fail but (unless something has changed) not much else. Plastic just isn't cut out for the job.
We're not rational beings, so what do you do about an irrational fear? You invent a magical thing that protects from that irrational fear.
You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.
You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?
So you invent some theater to stop people from panicking (a far more real danger). And that's a perfectly acceptable solution.
> You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.
This can be traced to people in a car believe they can control whether they have an accident or not (and largely can). In an airplane, however, you have no control whatsoever.
> This can be traced to people in a car believe they can control whether they have an accident or not (and largely can).
This is true. In France, about two thirds out of the people dying in a car accident are the actual drivers responsible for the accident, according to the 2024 Road Safety Report.
And if France it's anything like the UK, the absolute vast majority of these deaths are people driving drunk at night. If you are driving in city traffic at 20mph commuting to work your chance of dying is nearly zero - there's always a chance someone else might be speeding and crash into you, sure, but it's nowhere near the general rate of deaths in cars.
As a seque to this - knowing the above, I find it insane that various institutions are pushing for more and more aggressive driving aids.
I don't think that's a common perception of airport security. Few people take reassurance from it, most consider it a burden and hindrance that could stop them getting their flight if they don't perform the correct steps as instructed.
The lifting of this restriction is an example, the overwhelming response is "oh thank goodness, now I don't have to pay for overpriced water" and not "is this safe?"
I disagree. It is a burden and hindrance, but I'm pretty sure that if you just removed all the checks and let people board like in a bus, there would be complaints.
I know literally nobody panicking from some idea of terrorist attack against airplane, this is not a thing in Europe. Neither my old parents, neither any of my colleagues etc. Its not 2001 anymore and even back then we were mostly chill.
But I can claim one thing for sure - people hate security checks with passion.
My guess it's more about being able to say: 'We did everything we could.' If someone does end up getting a bomb on board. If they didn't do this, everyone would be angry and headlines would be asking: 'Why was nothing put in place to prevent this?'
I seriously doubt that most people are happy with the tradeoffs of safety vs. convenience provided by the TSA. The general idea of x-ray, metal detectors, sure, that's all good. But the stuff with taking off your shoes, small containers of liquid, etc., no. I think if we reverted to a simpler system with fewer oddly specific requirements layered on top, most people would not feel significantly less safe, but would feel less inconvenienced.
The thing about shoes is just dumb anyway - I don't know if there was some period of time where it was required elsewhere around the world but I never experienced it. Literally the only times I've ever had to take off my shoes were during the two times I've visited the US (vs. a over a dozen trips to European and Asian countries).
Liquid restrictions were also lifted in my country four or so years ago for domestic travel, so it's still annoying when getting ready for an international trip and I remember I still have to do that...
> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?
This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.
> You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality
Ah yes, the insidious opponent who learns the inherent vulnerability of ... huge crowds gathering before hand baggage screenings and TSA patdowns.
And these crowds are only there only due to a permanent immovable physical fixture of ... completely artificial barriers that fail to prevent anything 90-95% of the time.
On one hand, I think it's a valid criticism to say it's security theatre, to a degree. After 9/11, something had to be done, fast!, and we're still living with the after effects of that.
On the other hand: defence in depth. No security screening is perfect. Plastic guns can get through metal detectors but we still use them. Pat downs at nightclubs won't catch a razor blade concealed in someone's bra. We try to catch more common dangerous items with the knowledge that there's a long tail of things that could get through. There's nothing really new there, I don't think?
I'm fine with some liquid potentially being explosives, but the fact that security just throws them all in the same bin when they confiscate them makes me think that not even they believe it makes any sense.
Also, why 100ml? Do you need 150ml to make the explosive? Couldn't there be 2 terrorists with 100ml + 50ml? All these questions, so little answers...
most of airport security rests on the notion of going over a series of long tests will elicit unusual (fear, stress) responses from malicious actors and these can then be flagged for even thorougher checks which will then eventually lead to discovery, banning or removal of luggage
so it's not the test accuracy by itself but rather then the fact that these tests are happening at all
You have surprising faith that the system is well designed.
Malicious actors don't get as stressed as normal people who don't want to miss their flight about the long series of obviously pointless tests. Why would they?
And there isn't anyone who surveils the queues and takes the worried looking for further checks. This can happen around immigration checks. It happens for flights to Israel. But not in routine airport security.
> The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids.
The limits were instituted after discovering a plot to smuggle acetone and hydrogen peroxide (and ice presumably) on board to make acetone peroxide in the lavatory. TATP is not a liquid and it is not stable.
This illustrates a point though. TATP you could synthesize on a plane is entirely inadequate to bring down a plane. It also requires a bit more than acetone and hydrogen peroxide. Pan Am 103 required around half a kilo of RDX and TATP is very, very far from RDX.
The idea of synthesizing a proper high-explosive in an airplane lavatory is generally comical. The chemistry isn’t too complex but you won’t be doing it in an airplane lavatory.
From my understanding, the new CT machines are able to characterise material composition using dual-energy X-ray, and this is how they were able to relax the rules.
I am not up-to-date on the bleeding edge but that explanation doesn’t seem correct? The use of x-rays in analytical chemistry is for elemental analysis, not molecular analysis. (There are uses for x-rays in crystallography that but that is unrelated to this application.)
At an elemental level, the materials of a suitcase are more or less identical to an explosive. You won’t easily be able to tell them apart with an x-ray. This is analogous to why x-ray assays of mining ores can’t tell you what the mineral is, only the elements that are in the minerals.
FWIW, I once went through an airport in my travels that took an infrared spectra of everyone’s water! They never said that, I recognized the equipment. I forget where, I was just impressed that the process was scientifically rigorous. That would immediately identify anything weird that was passed off as water.
Neither of those articles seem to support the idea that you can do molecular analysis with x-rays. They are all about elemental analysis, which is not useful for the purpose of detecting explosives.
Not sure if they use dual-energy x-ray as in [0], but you don't need to if you take x-ray shot from different angles. Modern 3D reconstruction algorithms you can detect shape and volume of an object and estimate the material density through its absorption rate. A 100ml liquid explosive in a container will be distinguishable from water (or pepsi) by material density, which can be estimate from volume and absorption rate.
> FWIW, I once went through an airport in my travels that took an infrared spectra of everyone’s water! They never said that, I recognized the equipment. I forget where, I was just impressed that the process was scientifically rigorous. That would immediately identify anything weird that was passed off as water.
Something like 10 years ago, I had my water checked in a specialised "bottle of water checker" equipment in Japan. I had to put my bottle there, it took a second and that was it. I have been wondering why this isn't more common ever since :-).
No idea if it was an "infrared spectra machine" of course.
I believe the "theater" is needed precisely for this - to catch bad actors. There could just be a long queue with some blind dog and scary looking guy at the end. What it still does is makes a bad guy sweat, plan against it and etc. You just can't have free entrance for all. However you will never prevent state actors or similar with any kind of theatre because they will always prepare for it.
Is a open flame enough to ignite those liquids and don't they need something to press against to "explode" and not just cause a giant flame like gasoline?
Well, I watched the video of some former Delta Force officer, who said that you can sharpen your credit card to make a deadly weapon out of it. Let's ban credit cards in the airplanes.
> These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag
There are more ways to find them. Look up Z score. TL; DR New detectors can discriminate water from explosives. Old ones couldn’t. None of them are doing IR spectroscopy.
The same reason used for WA emissions inspections (since suspended). If your tailpipe emitted 99ppm of pollutants, you were good to go. If it emitted 100ppm, you had to get it fixed.
You have to be able to fit those 10 100mL bottles into a single 1 quart resealable bag. At most you'd probably get about 9.46 of those 10 bottles in the bag but in practice it's fewer still.
This was done! It created terrible publicity incidents like the TSA forcing women to drink their own breast milk to prove it was safe. And not all liquids subject to this are things a person should swig even if they aren’t explosives. The extremely negative PR rightly stopped this practice.
Is that practice not really common? I’ve seen that done as a matter of course on lots of international airports with baby food / liquid and no one seems to get too fussed about it.
People travel with liquids they don't intend to eat. Shampoo and all that.
There is also nothing that precludes explosives from being non-toxic. Presumably your demise is near if you are carrying explosives through security. What do you care about heavy metal poisoning at that point?
But also you can fill up a water bottle after security. Wouldn't it be fairly easy to make a pen or similar innocuous item out of sodium, and drop it in a bottle of water to make an explosion?
My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists. But maybe those are more common than a trained professional with high tech weapons, I don't know.
FWIW, sodium in water is such a pathetic explosion that it would mostly be an embarrassment for the would-be bomber. It wouldn’t do any meaningful damage.
An explosion with real gravitas is far more difficult to execute than people imagine. (see also: people that think ANFO is a viable explosive) This goes a long way in explaining why truly destructive bombings are rare.
> My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists.
This is the classic HN developer arrogance and oversimplification, but let's accept this as true for argument's sake. It turns out that "riff raff terrorists" are the only ones we needed to stop as there's been no successful bombings of Western airlines in 25 years, and there have been foiled attempts.
The existence of master locksmiths (and door breaching charges) doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door at night.
OP is talking about (mostly) TATP here. It's very easy to make, harder to detect with traditional methods and potent enough to be a problem. It's also hilariously unstable, will absolutely kill you before you achieve terrorism, and if you ask people on the appropriate chemistry subreddits how to make it you'll be ridiculed for days.
Yes, peroxide chemistries famously don’t show up on a lot of explosive scans. TATP is an example but not the only one and far from the best one. They are largely missing from common literature because they are too chemically reactive to be practical e.g. they will readily chemically interact with their environment, including most metal casings you might put them in, such that they become non-explosive.
That aside, TATP is a terrible explosive. Weak, unstable, and ineffective. The ridicule is well-deserved.
> . This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it.
Meanwhile, you get swabbed, the machine produces a false positive, the TSA drone asks you why the machine is showing a positive, you have no fucking idea why, and they just keep swabbing until they get a green light and everyone moves on with life.
...or be very anxious and resent air travel. I don't feel any safe through body searches, coupled with belt/coat removal, not wearing glasses and what not.
Personally, I don't know a single person who feels more secure due to the checks.
Sophisticated detonators are very small. The size is well below anything you’d be able to notice on an x-ray. Trying to detect detonators is an exercise in futility. Fortunately, a detonator by itself can’t do any damage.
if normal people don’t know, criminals/terrorists do, and the materials are commonplace but not screened for, then everything about the current approach is wrong.
and when has a plane been brought down by the evil explosives or stable liquids in recent memory?
It's obvious. The harder you make it to down or hijack a plane, the fewer downed planes you will see. It didn't have to be perfect to prevent and deter. Some security is better than no security. If you had no security at all you would see planes go down all the time.
And it wouldn't surprise me if some of the detection technology were classified.
It would not be "great" if governments were more open about their detection capabilities; that would cause more terrorism attempts and is one of the stupidest things one could do here.
Ahh, the naïvety of the scientific mind! The security theater is intended to prevent government beaurocrats' mates from having to get real jobs and keep them happily sponging off public money. Also, set themselves up for post-career high paid gigs with those same private sector beneficiaries, so they can't be done for corruption during their career. Yes, really. Ask an AI about mid to late career public sector transitions to private sector and cross-examine 100 top examples across markets perceived as 'low corruption index'.
there is actually a science change that happened, and it's not (entirely) just politicians changing their mind.
The big thing going from X-ray (2d) to CT (spin an X-ray machine around and take a ton of pictures to recreate a 3d image) did a lot to let security people see inside of a bag, but the hitch is that if you see a blob of gray is that water, shampoo or something else?
The recent advance that is letting this happen is machines who will send multiple wavelengths of X-ray through the material: since different materials absorb light differently, your machine can distinguish between materials, which lets you be more sure that that 2litre is (mostly) water, and then they can discriminate
It's a specific liquid scanner that's done on bottles that have been pulled aside for extra scanning (at least, that's what Frankfurt was doing a couple weeks ago)
I think if an MRI was ever used for airport security screening it would cause more damage and disruption than the terrorist bombs it purports to detect.
Certainly, but a) not at the prices people wanted to spend to get 25,000 of them b) not at the maintenance cost for 25,000 of them c) without the software to (by someone's metric) discriminate between shampoo and bomb with enough error
No successful terrorist attacks on planes going to/from western countries after 9/11/2001, that's a pretty good record. Maybe we can't prove that the security theater was responsible for that, but still, the only planes that were bombed after 9/11/2001 were inside Russia or going from Egypt to Russia.
TSA direct costs, passenger time wasted, flights missed, items confiscated.
All so no bombs on planes. But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....
So the TSA is either stunningly successful or a complete waste. I'd argue a complete waste, but hey, everyone in a TSA uniform drawing a paycheck us entitled to a different opinion.
It's just not bombs that are a danger. You really don't want anyone to set the airplane on fire either, or start shooting people or holes into the fuselage.
AFAIK America has had plenty of shootings, and probably arson attacks too over that time period.
I've traveled all over Europe and North America and have taken a lot of trains. Not once did I have to remove my shoe, scan my baggage, or had any kind of liquid restrictions.
Concerts and things like sporting events in the US typically require any bags to be clear and only be of a certain size. They may also be checked. No outside liquids are typically allowed (mainly to avoid alcohol). Usually people are at least wanded to prevent weapons, but sometimes metal detectors are setup.
You can tell because some of the failed bombings (like the shoe bomber) failed because their plans were stupid to get around security, and if security wasn't there they would probably have used a normal bomb and succeeded
I have no idea if it has worked or not but you got to count deterrence too. If you have a lock and alarm in your house it might deter someone from even trying to break in. Of course you could never know if the deterrence worked (only attempts would be noticeable)
This is somewhat false? There were four other bombings, two in western countries (specifically EU->US flights). None of these two were successful in terms of "the plane was downed", but bombs were carried on a plane and exploded, and security didn't stop that.
22 December 2001, American Airlines Flight 63
7 May 2002, China Northern Flight 6136
25 December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253
2 February 2016, Daallo Airlines Flight 159
Plane hijacking has been on its way out anyway after the turmoil of the 1970s. And that has probably more to do with a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period, and b) a general sense that airplane hijacking isn’t actually that likely to advance your political goals. If you read the list above, you see people hijacking planes all kinds of dumb methods, hardly any of them involves carrying an actual bomb onto the plane.
There has been way less terrorism in general too. I'm always curious whether the war on terrorism is that effective, or there's major socioeconomic factor that matters most (or there's just less lead in the air).
Back in the day you needed to get onto TV and into newspaper headlines to get any attentions besides your neighbours. Today you can do that with a Facebook page and send your ideas worldwide.
And that works the back way too: instead of the news of bombing in some remote country you can't even find on the map you can get a funny cat videos to fill in.
3-1-1 is rarely enforced. I always got confused why the 100ml limit existed, since I could just take multiple bottles of 100ml of whatever I wanted and it was okay. Then I realized that technically I only could take 3 bottles but I’ve been getting away with more for decades.
Yeah, I flew thru Eindhoven Airport in the Netherlands a few years ago, and I couldn't believe they let me through with water.
The security used something I would describe as out of an Iron Man film, they were zooming around a translucent 3D view of my backpack. (It was on an LCD display instead of hovering midair, but I was still impressed. But the fact they let me keep the water was even more amazing, hahah.)
> The security used something I would describe as out of an Iron Man film, they were zooming around a translucent 3D view of my backpack. (It was on an LCD display instead of hovering midair, but I was still impressed.
I just flew with two laptops in my backpack which I didn't have to take out for the first time (haven't flown in a while), with a custom PCB with a couple of vivaldi antennas sandwiched in between the laptops.
It was a real trip watching them view the three PCBs as a single stack, then automatically separate them out, and rotate them individually in 3D. The scanner threw some kind of warning and the operator asked me what the custom PCB was, so I had to explain to them it was a ground penetrating radar (that didn't go over well; I had to check the bag)
Tel Aviv has allowing this for quite some time (10 years?). I guess they update their security devices as soon as new technology becomes available.
They don't advertise it, I found out by accident, trying to empty my water bottle by drinking when a security person told me to just put it together with the rest of my stuff. I had no idea that was a thing and was pretty confused.
You can do realtime 3D flythroughs on CT scans with open source viewers. If you've ever had one, get your DICOM data set and enjoy living in the future.
I've seen this too in the US, the newer machines let them spin the scan around in 3D space and must make it much easier to tell if something needs inspection or not
Yeah these are pretty common in the US, but they're just not ubiquitous. Many airports will still have a CT machine next to the old one and it just depends on what line you get out in.
> Not because of a sudden outbreak of sanity, but because they have CT scanners now.
What's is the evidence for believing so strongly that airports all over the world have been prohibiting large amounts of liquids due to widespread insanity?
Let me get this straight. If the article is correct, the new capabilities are related to better detection of large liquid containers, not determination of whether or not the liquid is dangerous.
So - you couldn’t take large amounts of liquids previously because some liquids in large amounts might be able to be weaponized. If you were caught with too much liquid (in sum total, or in containers that are too large) they’d throw it out and send you on your way.
But now that they have the ability to detect larger containers, they… do what? Declare that it’s safe and send you on your way with it still in your possession?
Dublin has been relaxing their restrictions for a while now, and when I travelled two weeks ago, had also completely dropped the rules. You no longer need to remove liquids or electronics from bags, and the liquids per bottle limits are much higher (don’t remember exactly, maybe 2 litres) with no restriction on total number of bottles.
I watched a YouTube video about it a few months back and apparently the new devices, at least those used in Dublin, are much more accurate in detecting the difference between materials that previously looked similar to the machines, they can also rotate the images in 3d to get a look from different angles. Both of these make it easier to tell whether a substance is dangerous, apparently.
When you don't know much about a topic, probability is higher that your are missing some piece than some entity doing things that make no sense.
I know it's easy to get the impression that's not the case. But when your stop making fun of / belittle such events / persons / decision and be curious instead you start to realize that more often than not you are just missing a piece of information.
The truth oftentimes is just not interesting enough and not clickbait worthy.
You’re right. I am genuinely curious though, so I shouldn’t have been so snarky about it. I’ll try again:
I’ve always been under the impression that large containers of liquids were forbidden because they were potentially dangerous. If that hasn’t changed, and if the new technology is only about being able to better detect the presence of liquids in packed luggage, why have the limits on container size changed?
EDIT: So I see that the article says that it’s about being able to keep the liquids in your bag when going through security. But I thought liquids in large containers were forbidden from going through security entirely unless you had some kind of medical justification for them?
I believe the article mentioned density as well. I suspect that is extremely key in determining what it is, or at least determining if it is something really odd that should get additional screening.
It's not just large amounts of liquids: it was my understanding that this is both a restriction on large amounts of liquid, but particularly on large containers needed for an explosive of sufficient destructive power.
You could always easily work around the liquid amount restriction (multiple containers over multiple people), but if you still need a large container, it becomes harder.
I don't know if this is true or if a resealable plastic bag also works, for instance (that would be funny, wouldn't it?).
Alcohol is flammable around 40%. French cooks aren’t using overproof brandy to do flambé.
Gunpowder doused in alcohol is, very famously for people interested in the history of rum, flammable if the alcohol is around 57.1% or higher, but straight alcohol/water without gunpowder is flammable at a lower strength than that.
Have you never been screened where they swab your items and stick it in a machine? That is to detect explosives. They can use the first machine to target people for follow up screening.
I have, but what’s relevant is that I’m always commanded to dump out any liquids in containers bigger than the 3.4 oz limit before going through security unless they’re like a prescription medication. What I’m unclear on why that’s changed if the improvement that’s been made is in detection of liquids in packed bags.
My GF is from East Asia and has travelled almost 100 countries, anything from rich first world to poor 3rd world countries.
She was absolutely shocked to find that liquid container limits were enforced in northern Europe. She would just put her makeup bag with cleansers and gels and everything in her carry-on and travel the world.
Frankfurt has been doing that for ages (2 years now?). They just got better scanners. But they don't cover all terminals or checkpoints, so you gotta know your way around.
I don't recall it in Frankfurt last summer, but it was definitely going earlier this month. Though, they've got a weird security setup for some of the gates, so I'm sure it varied from gate to gate. Dublin and Edinburgh have had it for a while too, Dublin since last summer. Really speeds up security.
It seems that this is only in place at the security entering the terminal. I landed in Heathrow a few days ago and had to empty out my water bottle (which I got given on the flight to the UK) for the transfer security check.
If you come in from a country that doesn’t fall under the TSA, you have to clear TSA before getting on a flight that does.
The worst I had was in India, flying to the US. Not only was there the normal airport security (despite having come in on a connecting flight from within India), but when I got to the gate (with only minutes to spare), there was a whole TSA check at the gate itself. Bags x-rayed (again), metal detectors (again), guy with a wand (again), the whole deal. Just getting to the gate, I had to show my papers to at least 6 people; every time I turned down a new hallway. That was my far my worst airport experience.
Pretty common to have to re-clear security at large airports if you've come from another country, I've had to do it every time when transiting through Dubai for instance.
Famously Steve Jobs had a story about shaving time off of boot-up and equating it to saving lives on the concept of people sitting their waiting for the computer to boot up just lost that much of their lives. [1] I actually do believe there is value in thinking this way and it is one of my biggest arguments against TSA. Everything has a cost, including 'security' and 'safety'. If you look at the very real human toll, and economic toll, that airport security has caused any potential gain is out the window in just one day of costs from screening, and that doesn't even get into the privacy destruction this has caused. I think I would get way to angry to comment on that in an intelligent way.
But that is just one argument. My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives if we put effort into this technology for people instead of for a sense of security. But we probably won't. Because fear gets money but solving real problems that actually impact people doesn't.
> My real anger is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and ... get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc
Airport screening of people doesn't yield those results. It's able to notice a big inorganic mass, or a chunk of metal, but it wouldn't spot a tumour, it gives nowhere near the level of detail that an MRI or CAT scan will give. The airport scanners are also much cheaper, coming in at ~250k USD rather than ~2m USD.
Even the xray machines used for bags, while expensive and capable, are designed to differentiate metals, liquids, and organics, not organics from other organics.
Both airport security and healthcare funding have their issues, but I don't think this is one of them.
I think the OP was lamenting the overall effort and resources that could have been applied to something more effective at helping people, such as improving the medical industry, not suggesting that airport screening equipment could be used for medical purposes.
I think the point is we can afford massive machines for the TSA that are essentially paid for by the Federal Budget, and used by millions each day for free, but we can't do the same for MRI machines.
Not free. If you look at an itemized statement for air travel you’ll see that you’re paying the TSA for this treatment directly.
Not really relevant, just makes the whole thing worse imho. There are new carryon bag scanners which are basically CT scans I think. Again not really relevant just makes it all worse. We could afford better medical care but we spending it on security theater and power tripping.
Lots of stuff is funded by the US federal budget instead of MRI machines.
My point is that there's not actually any useful connection between the TSA scanners and medical scanners, it's comparing apples to oranges. By all means be angry about the lack of healthcare in the US, by all means blame other spending, but singling out the TSA is arbitrary.
Not that your thrust is incorrect, but a CT machine (used here at airports) and MRI machines are completely different beasts in not just cost but also complexity.
Nobody or no item is getting an MRI at an airport. It's pretty common for people to conflate that with X-rays but MRIs work on a fundamentally different process and exclusively (outside of physics 101) requires liquid helium-cooled superconducting magnets to get anything useful.
> My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives
This always strikes me as a weird thing tech people believe about medicine. Full body scans just aren’t medically useful for otherwise healthy people. You’ll inevitably see something and it’s almost certainly going to be benign but might send you down the path of a lot of expensive and dangerous treatments or exploratory procedures. This is why there’s always so much debate about prostrate exam and breast exam age recommendations. There’s a tipping point where the risk of iatrogenesis outward the risk of disease.
People should be able to do full 3d scans of their bodies, and then doctors should be able to tell them what they should ignore. If they spot something abnormal they could suggest coming back 6 months or a year later to check if it has changed, just like mole scans. The problems that you suggest only come from people overreacting to test results. We can do better.
Only in the Apple reality distortion field would I see the hubris of boot times being equated to saving lives. I see value in saving time, but without the celebrity worship, it's nowhere near the same in terms of importance, application, or utility. Besides, the same time saving desire has been a driving force in software by nameless developers since the beginning of software. Attempting to frame and attribute the concept to a single individual is dismissive and disrespectful to the work of others.
There’s alot to imaging. When my wife was battling cancer she was getting alot of MRIs and was in a trial for computerized radiology. We got to talk to the radiologist, who showed us the difference between what he found vs the machine. The machine spotted some stuff that he didn’t, but wasn’t as good at classification.
You also need context to appropriately interpret what you see.
They're still legal tender, you can pay things with them. They just stopped producing new ones. It's supposedly permanent, but they can continue producing it any time in the future if they really wanted to.
Well, they still exist and you can still pay for things with them (though a lot of businesses won’t give you them in change, and just round up to the nearest $0.05).
I guess it’ll be a few years before they’re out of circulation entirely.
I almost exclusively take trains now because the experience of flying is one of repeated dehumanization, especially in the USA.
First, if getting dropped off in a car (most American airports this is your only option), you must suffer being screamed at by traffic cops while trying to navigate a perpetually under construction dropoff area. You get one (1) peck on the cheek from mum before some uniformed individual waddles over to yell at you some more.
Then you must wait in line at a check in counter behind fifty families with 4 large luggage items each, despite the fact that you only have a backpack. Why? Because when you tried to do online check-in and boarding pass, the site broke / said no, and the self-service check-in kiosk at the airport still isn't switched on despite being installed a decade ago.
At the check-in counter, a person who knows less than you about the country you're traveling to will inform you as a matter of fact that you can't get ok the flight until you buy a return ticket, since that's what their binder says and they don't understand your visa. You must wait for a supervisor to come and verify that your visa is actually valid.
Before security, you're offered the rich person line if you have the money to pay for it. Literally advertised as a "white glove experience." If not well, into security with the rest of the cattle.
At security, you get to be screamed at by TSA for not knowing the exact procedures of this airport you've never been to. Why must they have to tell Passenger, who is one person they see ten thousand times a day, over and over again that you have to push your box onto the automated belt yourself, rather than let it be pushed on as a train with the other boxes. Passenger must be stupid. Surely it's not because of poor signage that Passenger doesn't know what to do. And by the way, take off your shoes and let us look at your genitals. Oh, you don't want us to look at your genitals? Well then we'll have to just grope every inch of your body, and nut check you for making us do our job in a slightly more annoying way. Just in case you're terrorist scum, we'll check if you have bomb making residue on your skin, while someone else opens your luggage and digs around in it so everyone else in like can see what your underwear looks like. At TSA we offer full service sexualized humiliation, guaranteed!
The dehumanization never ends. Once on the flight you are packed in like cattle, so tight you're rubbing shoulders with the person on your right and left, while your knees dig into the back of the person in front of you. You're served a tray of slop that you have to pay for now. Security took your water bottle, but when you ask for water on the flight, it's given to you in a tiny plastic cup, that's free if you're lucky. Now sit there quietly while we try to sell credit cards to this captured audience.
Finally you land and it's time to get off the plane! Oh actually no, the curtain is closed in your face. Silly peasant, you must watch the first class passengers leisurely pack their things and stroll off the plane. Only until the last one is off may the dirty peasants pass the fabric barrier.
And don't rely on the destination airport having the same rules when you fly back.
This used to get people doing EU -> London flights. The EU rules had already been relaxed, but you got bitten by the extra restrictions when you went to fly back.
Like most things, flying is a complete shitshow, but do it often enough and you get used to it and all of the foibles.
Regularly flying hand luggage only is a grind as you're at the mercy of the lowest common denominator in terms of rules on what you can carry. When I had to visit a string of customers with one or two flights a day I had to submit expense claims with various toiletries purchased several times over, it was questioned by the finance department and they asked about whether I should check in a bag next time, but they stopped pushing when I said that adding a checked bag to my tickets would have been about 10 times more expensive than just buying things as and when I needed them.
Hugely wasteful but then so is flying, and most of my trips could have been replaced with a video call if it wasn't for touchy-feely corporate politics.
Water: I use a generic cycling bidon for travel. I empty it before security and they're happy with that. Any sane airport will have places to refill it for free, if they don't I can just buy a bottle of water and refill it. No airport I've traveled through has wanted to confiscate an empty cycling bidon and if they did it's cheap to replace.
I noticed my eyes started automatically skimming right after that paragraph. It's funny my brain has learned to calibrate its reading effort in response to how much perceived effort went into writing it.
This is funny because just a few months ago, I was forced at Heathrow to chug -- not allowed to pour out! -- my entire water bottle that I had filled prior to my flight. The security person watched me do it and added, "bathroom's over there".
Anything a border official says is implicitly backed with the threat of, at a minimum, detention without trial and without basic humane treatment like access to drinking water. Heathrow has well publicised cases (and is not unusual in this).
It's probably much more boring. The choice was likely between leaving the whole water bottle and its contents in a bin of forbidden/discarded items, going home and missing the flight, or chugging it, or arranging a courier for said bottle.
Probably the act of defiance of pouring the contents onto the floor where there was no drain was implied to be disruptive and would have lead to harsher sanction for no reasonable payoff.
Heathrow is a fucking miserable place with spiteful staff and it would not surprise me one bit if someone decided to fuck with a traveller this way. I saw a girl running to catch a bus to another terminal for a connecting flight, and the guy controller her made an enormous stink about her "breathing on me". She was polite and apologetic but she got pulled aside and made to wait for everyone else to get through, got sternly chastised before being allowed to continue (whereupon she missed the connecting bus and presumably her flight). Same trip I saw them them shouting and swearing at disabled travellers who needed wheelchairs. Every other member of staff in the airport was stood around fucking with their phones and seemed furious whenever they had to do their job.
> If the median UK salary is >£35,000 I really wonder how arrive at the conclusion that missing a flight will set you back "years or decades"...
Ok, now take that figure and deduct tax, housing, food, utilities and so on - how much do you think is disposable/saveable? And then take the typical cost of a last-minute replacement flight and compare those two numbers.
it would be incredibly inconvenient, and maybe missing other parts of a full vacation would set them back, but thats not the only reason people buy flights
On my last trip I bought some different deodorant, because my usual brand was .2oz over the limit. Not sure why the brand wouldn’t just go with the TSA limit to make life easy for everyone. The new stuff ended up staining all my shirts. I largely blame the TSA for having to buy all new shirts. Next time I’m going to less of a stickler for the rules and hope for the best, as following the rules yields poor outcomes. Hopefully by that time the new rules will filter out to more airports.
> TSA needs consistency in alarm resolution, secondary screening rates, and officer workflows—otherwise “keep liquids packed” becomes a promise that varies by airport, terminal, and even time of day.
...what? These already vary in the same airport literally by adjacent lanes...
I have never understood how this was effective against a determined adversary. An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless when there is no limit to the number of times you can pass through the checkpoint.
I'm sure that going through security 5 times for the same flight is bound to trigger some extra screening and even if it doesn't, each time you cross through increases the likelihood of getting caught by the normal process.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a large part of it is just security theatre, but part of it is also just to be enough of a deterrent that a would-be terrorist chooses a different target.
Do you know that the 100 ml liquids gets scanned in the Heathrow airport? Many times they used to do a secondary scan too after the primary scan. I recall this very well because many times I was made to wait longer after my carry on arrived because they wanted to put the liquids through a secondary scan.
Oh. So it was a security measure? I honestly thought it was a way to force you to spend money on things on the airport or abroad. Like shampoo, water, etc.
It was a reaction to a foiled terrorist attack in the UK where terrorists planned to blow up planes using liquid explosives disguised as bottles of soda.
In many countries (Canada included) if you pass through security into the international terminal, you have to 're-enter the country' back through customs and immigration if you don't get on your flight.
It's also hilarious that the limit is the very metric 100ml, and not some even number of freedom units like 3 or 4 fluid ounces, like Jesus, George Washington, and bald eagles would have wanted.
The UK uses an odd mixture of both depending on context.
The use of "100ml" in airports is because using "3.519 fl oz" would be confusing to far more people. Even within the UK we use metric for small liquid measures like this (smaller liquid measures end up being weird stuff like "teaspoons" or "tablespoons").
And this isn't just because the UK uses a different fluid ounce to the US (100ml is 3.519 UK fluid ounces and 3.3814 US fluid ounces).
Anyone under the age of about 60 in the UK would had metric measurements taught to them at school as it became a mandatory to teach it in 1974. Many schools would have been teaching it already, and probably lots since the currency changed in 1971 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day).
The youth of today (as seen through the lens of my kids) are very metric, often defaulting to distances in meters and kilometers. Miles only seem to be used idiomatically, e.g. "he lives a few miles away".
I'm completely happy to switch between all of them not just because of my UK education covered them all, but I've lived for more than a year in the US, the UK and some European countries.
There are still plenty of examples of mixed measurement systems in the UK though.
Canned/bottled drinks are marked in ml, but a lot of that is due to the proximity to the EU and the previous ties to it. Open drinks are often sold in imperial measures (pints, etc) although spirits moved from fractions of a gill (imperial) to metric (25ml for a single, or 50ml for a double) in the mid 80s.
Of course the UK and US pints are different sizes (568ml and 473.176ml). Not just because the fluid ounces are different sizes as noted above, but also because the UK has 20 fluid ounces in a pint and the US 16 (of its) fluid ounces in a US pint.
For driving distances and speeds are based on miles, but for pedestrian distances you'll see a mixture of miles/yards or km/meters. Restricted heights (e.g. low bridges) or widths are covered in both feet/inches and meters given the number of European freight drivers on the roads here.
Occasionally you'll see some nonsense where a sign has displays both, and where the actual distance to something might be shown as "400 yards" it had almost certainly been rounded up/down to that whole number to make it simpler on the sign, but when it is converted to meters the converted value is used, so you see odd things like:
"
Whatever it is
400 yards
365 meters
"
(The UK traditionally used "metre" but that usage is quite rare now and we've mostly moved over to using "meter" like the US does.)
I'm surprised that the UK and US don't have different length miles (the US did have a different length "foot" but the "Survey foot" was discontinued in 2023).
1) Bodyscanners: body scanners are a scam
2) They took away my 100ml contain that clearly had less than 1 cm of liquid in it because it wasn't clearly labelled as "100ml". Any idiot could know it was like 10ml full.
3) They used to do actual xray basically on people.
4) You have to re-security to transfer on connections! You already could have blown up the incoming plane, why does this even matter?
I don't go there anymore. Waste of time and all security theatre without common sense.
A trick I use to bypass the liquid restriction is to intentionally pack a sacrificial bottle in addition to whatever valuable bottle I care about. In most cases when the luggage comes for manual inspection they toss the first (sacrificial one) they see and leave the actual valuable bottle alone.
Flew through Heathrow a few months ago. Signs flashing on the screens specifically saying laptops must be removed, security guys yelling “don’t remove laptops”
Hmm, I once transited in Heathrow in a return flight from europe to the US and had to go through Heathrow security for whatever reason, where they subjected me to liquids rules way stricter than either my source or destination did.
E.g. 1 day use contact lenses and prescription creams all having to fit in a tiny plastic bag. So I'm happy for this change.
> Hmm, I once transited in Heathrow in a return flight from europe to the US and had to go through Heathrow security for whatever reason,
The US mandates that you have to go through TSA approved security before getting on a flight to the US.
Either the security at your European airport wasn't good enough, or the transit at Heathrow allowed you to access to things that invalidated the previous security screening and so it had to be done again.
The bonus is that if you get to go through US Immigration at the departure airport then you can often land at domestic terminals in the US and the arrivals experience is far less tortuous. I flew to the US with a transit in Ireland a few times and it was so much nicer using the dead time before the Ireland -> US flight to clear immigration rather than spending anything from 15 minutes to 4 hours in a queue at the arrival airport in the US (all depending on which other flights arrived just before yours).
I had the luck of traveling by plane quite a bit before 2001 and I can tell you it was much more pleasurable. Now, the issues now-a-days are not only due to the security circus, it's true. But it does play a major role.
Forgive my zooming out but the overton window on this topic is in the wrong place. Airport security is dehumanizing inconvenient and unacceptable. I’d only use planes in an emergency. The living memory of what air travel is supposed to be is just gone with the sands of time. I don’t accept the shit economy version starting #1 with the cattle screening.
I always thought the rule was about damage (liquid spilling onto your bag and other passengers' bags) rather than safety? That's based on how the rule was shaped: 100ml containers with no limits as long as in a sealed plastic bag.
I wonder if they'll walk this back? If you put a 2L water bottle in the overhead compartment and hit enough turbulence, it could open and drench the entire compartment and other people's luggage.
You're already allowed to refill large water bottles from a water fountain after passing through security, so the situation you described is already allowed to happen.
The security theater needs to go on. In the meantime batteries represent a much bigger risk with potential in flight fires but I guess nobody cares enough to do anything about it.
Batteries are such an incredible oversight if we are trying to control for kinetic energy.
100 watts for an hour ~= 36000 watts for ten seconds. Every fully charged laptop roughly has enough energy to bring an automobile up to highway speed (once). How many of these laptops exist on a typical flight?
We flew a couple legs on Virgin Atlantic yesterday. The info session before takeoff made several mentions of batteries - unplug devices when not on use / not in your seat, if your battery gets hot, don't leave your seat/notify a flight attendant immediately. (I think they have containers to try to contain lithium fires onboard FWIW.)
If batteries were standardized and replaceable I bet they would force you to not bring your own, and only ones purchasable passed the gate could be used. Maybe that a silver lining to the repairability issues.
On Scoot (Budget Singapore Air) they let you bring your external phone batteries on the plane but do NOT let you use them. You have to rent one of theirs.
Skyphone installation by the airlines led to "flight mode" because the horror of not paying is far more important than safety.
All of this fake, useless theatre undermines real security and makes us less safe while picking our pockets.
Fluids to bring down a plane? FFS every human is equipped with a bladder. Why was this charlatanism ever tolerated at all?
The intention/purpose of the limit on fluids was to prevent people from assembling liquid explosives inside the plane. The contents of your bladder would not help with that.
So if you drink some of the fluid in front of the goon instead of being instructed to pour the water out, that would show it's not explosive and everything is fine? Test for is this fluid water isn't complex chemistry right? So we're good to go, yeah? No.
It's an attack that never happened and wouldn't. It's nuts.
They should have banned underwear because the underwear bomber /did/ happen. But sure, that's awkward and would impact revenue, (I don't wanna go nude so I won't fly unless I have to), so the ridiculousness of doing so triumphed where it did not with water and shoes.
Lock on the cockpit door was worthwhile (unless the threat is a psychotic German copilot, worked bad then). Also the successful terrorist strategy had expired useless even before the end of its first use on 9/11 as passengers found out, realised new rules: fight back now, hard.
Bastards at Heathrow stole a sealed jar of Fortnum & Mason jam from me. For security! Because onion jam could blow up a plane. FFS. But sure, you could buy the same stuff once through security and take it on the plane at inflated prices. Where there was a financial incentive to do so and a secial interest to lobby for it, the idiocy stopped. In 5 meters.
The purpose of these moronic rules was /not/ what you think it was. It was just a sequence of moronic compromises around dumb ideas influenced by special interest. You can't respect it and respect your own intelligence. Security is actually important, do better.
South Korean here, it's all over the news but it sounds rather pointless. Faulty batteries can catch fire even when not in use. And the airlines still allow each passenger to carry up to 5 power banks, 100Wh each. That's enough power to blow up any aircraft.
I lost a nice swiss army knife in Singapore because I was carry-on only and forgot I keep one in my toiletries bag. Was really upset because it was a Christmas gift from my parents. Annoying they don't let you collect it on the way back, I totally get it but would have paid a fine to get it back
It would be nice if there was an option to box it up and mail it back home or to a friend/family member for a fee. While a lot of people have throw away knives and wouldn’t care, many also have knives that are either expensive or have a lot of meaning.
Maybe they would encourage more people to risk it and hope they don’t get caught, but a vast majority of these people aren’t criminals. When I was a kid I would always take a Swiss Army knife with me on vacation. That was my favorite thing to back, and I could look like a hero when an opportunity came up where it was useful. No longer.
You should have backed up and posted it to yourself or a friend. Being the best airport in the world, there are self-service kiosks (Speedpost@Changi) in the transit areas of Terminals 1, 2 and 3, and in the public area of T4 (as the only terminal with centralised security).
They detected one of the very small Victorinox pocket knifes in my hand luggage at HKG airport and kept it; but I was given the option of picking it up at the carrier's airport office upon return.
The motivation behind the liquid limits is that there are extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids. Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore. There has never been an industrial or military use, solids are simpler. Nonetheless, these explosives are easily accessible to a knowledgeable chemist like me.
These explosives can be detected via infrared spectroscopy but that isn’t going to be happening to liquids in your bag. This reminds me of the chemical swipes done on your bags to detect explosives. Those swipes can only detect a narrow set of explosive chemistries and everyone knows it. Some explosives notoriously popular with terror organizations can’t be detected. Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.
It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
TSA Chief Out After Agents Fail 95 Percent of Airport Breach Tests
"In one case, an alarm sounded, but even during a pat-down, the screening officer failed to detect a fake plastic explosive taped to an undercover agent's back. In all, so-called "Red Teams" of Homeland Security agents posing as passengers were able get weapons past TSA agents in 67 out of 70 tests — a 95 percent failure rate, according to agency officials."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...
I'm not sure what their success rate is when tested by professionals but the experience definitely left me wondering WTF the deal with the TSA is.
I've never had a bad experience with TSA but I hate taking off my shoes and all. I really question the value of those security measures.
Same with hot sauces, perfume and the occasional bottles of wine. I really don't like to travel with a checked-in luggage, so this is a frequent problem.
Luckily I own lots of Rick Owens clothes with large hidden pockets.
Flight from London to Barcelona: £16
Bottle of water past security: £5
Train to airport: £26
Taxi enters drop-off area for 30 seconds: £7
A person who wants to get the advertised flight at the advertised price has to be very careful.
But hey, at least the luggage carts are free…
I get your approach, but say where we live (Switzerland) if you have something not tightly around your body like a fleece jacket, you have to take it off and put it through scanner, this is default. Sometimes they still ask me to go down to t-shirt even if its obvious I don't have anything in pockets.
Not worth the hassle for something that is mostly free and probably healthier compared to plastic bottles stored god knows where and how long. I'd imagine if they catch you, you are going for more detailed inspection since its obvious you didn't forget 1kg bottle in clothing you wear by accident.
Others disallow even empty bottles at security screening
I haven't encountered this. Could you name some?
This matches my experience. I recently flew out of a small airport that flies 2 fairchild metro 23 turboprop planes up to 9 passengers. There were four TSA agents to check the 5 of us that were flying.
They don't stop hijackings (locking the cockpit door does that), they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber), they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
They do however cost the govt a lot of money, keep a lot of expensive-machine-makers, and in business, improve shampoo sales at destinations, waste a lot of passenger time and so on.
So... what's not to love?
It's just a job.
They're principally motivated to do this job by the promise of a steady paycheck and decent benefits -- the same motivation that most other people with steady paychecks and decent benefits also have.
9/11 also stopped all future hijackings. Up to that point passengers were trained that if they stayed calm they would likely survive. Now? Short of the hijackers getting guns on the plane, passengers will absolutely fight back.
> they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber)
Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
I think you should read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_airliner_bombing_a...
The only reason you believe aircraft bombings aren't being stopped is because you live in a world where rigourous security has stopped all aircraft bombings.
They still are, but I'm not comfortable spelling out details. The 95% TSA failure rate should lead you to this conclusion naturally.
> They wouldn't even necessarily need a bomb, anything that can cause a big enough fire mid-flight could be potentially catastrophic.
People have plenty of such things with them as it currently stands. Plenty more can be trivially brought on board in a checked bag or even pocket. But again I'm not going to spell it out.
> I really don't want it to be easy for any random person to cause such fire.
Well that's unfortunate because it already is. I think the primary things protecting passengers are the cost of entry (the true nutjobs don't tend to be doing so well financially) and the passengers themselves. Regarding the latter, the shoe bomber was subdued by his fellow passengers.
(1) Bombings in which the bomb is supplied by someone who isn't flying on the plane;
(2) Failed hijackings in which there was no intent to bomb the plane, but a bomb accidentally went off.
There are 3D printed guns.
I thought that was the US military?
We're not rational beings, so what do you do about an irrational fear? You invent a magical thing that protects from that irrational fear.
You're orders of magnitude more likely to die in a road accident, but people don't fear that. They fear terrorist attacks far more.
You can't protect against an opponent who's motivated to learn the inherent vulnerabilities of our systems, many of which can't be protected against due to the laws of physics and practicality - short of forcing everyone to travel naked and strapped in like cattle, with no luggage. And even then, what about the extremist who works for the airline?
So you invent some theater to stop people from panicking (a far more real danger). And that's a perfectly acceptable solution.
This can be traced to people in a car believe they can control whether they have an accident or not (and largely can). In an airplane, however, you have no control whatsoever.
This is true. In France, about two thirds out of the people dying in a car accident are the actual drivers responsible for the accident, according to the 2024 Road Safety Report.
People try to treat "largely" as "fully" and that fails.
As a seque to this - knowing the above, I find it insane that various institutions are pushing for more and more aggressive driving aids.
I don't think that's a common perception of airport security. Few people take reassurance from it, most consider it a burden and hindrance that could stop them getting their flight if they don't perform the correct steps as instructed.
The lifting of this restriction is an example, the overwhelming response is "oh thank goodness, now I don't have to pay for overpriced water" and not "is this safe?"
But I can claim one thing for sure - people hate security checks with passion.
My guess it's more about being able to say: 'We did everything we could.' If someone does end up getting a bomb on board. If they didn't do this, everyone would be angry and headlines would be asking: 'Why was nothing put in place to prevent this?'
Liquid restrictions were also lifted in my country four or so years ago for domestic travel, so it's still annoying when getting ready for an international trip and I remember I still have to do that...
This is said as an axiom, but we have protected against the motivated terrorist, as shown by the safety record.
Ah yes, the insidious opponent who learns the inherent vulnerability of ... huge crowds gathering before hand baggage screenings and TSA patdowns.
And these crowds are only there only due to a permanent immovable physical fixture of ... completely artificial barriers that fail to prevent anything 90-95% of the time.
On the other hand: defence in depth. No security screening is perfect. Plastic guns can get through metal detectors but we still use them. Pat downs at nightclubs won't catch a razor blade concealed in someone's bra. We try to catch more common dangerous items with the knowledge that there's a long tail of things that could get through. There's nothing really new there, I don't think?
Also, why 100ml? Do you need 150ml to make the explosive? Couldn't there be 2 terrorists with 100ml + 50ml? All these questions, so little answers...
Everything I know about liquid explosives I learned from Die Hard 3.
so it's not the test accuracy by itself but rather then the fact that these tests are happening at all
Malicious actors don't get as stressed as normal people who don't want to miss their flight about the long series of obviously pointless tests. Why would they?
And there isn't anyone who surveils the queues and takes the worried looking for further checks. This can happen around immigration checks. It happens for flights to Israel. But not in routine airport security.
The limits were instituted after discovering a plot to smuggle acetone and hydrogen peroxide (and ice presumably) on board to make acetone peroxide in the lavatory. TATP is not a liquid and it is not stable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...
The idea of synthesizing a proper high-explosive in an airplane lavatory is generally comical. The chemistry isn’t too complex but you won’t be doing it in an airplane lavatory.
Even a small fire can down a plane, especially when distant from diversion airports.
At an elemental level, the materials of a suitcase are more or less identical to an explosive. You won’t easily be able to tell them apart with an x-ray. This is analogous to why x-ray assays of mining ores can’t tell you what the mineral is, only the elements that are in the minerals.
FWIW, I once went through an airport in my travels that took an infrared spectra of everyone’s water! They never said that, I recognized the equipment. I forget where, I was just impressed that the process was scientifically rigorous. That would immediately identify anything weird that was passed off as water.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_imaging_(radiography)
[2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2719491/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-energy_X-ray_absorptiomet...
If your liquid is 80%+ water (that covers all juices and soft drinks), it is not going to be an explosive, too much thermal ballast.
Something like 10 years ago, I had my water checked in a specialised "bottle of water checker" equipment in Japan. I had to put my bottle there, it took a second and that was it. I have been wondering why this isn't more common ever since :-).
No idea if it was an "infrared spectra machine" of course.
This is also why a bunch of airports no longer ask you to take electronics out of your bags.
realistically any broken glass bottle can be used as a blade.
The entire point is futile and pointless.
There are more ways to find them. Look up Z score. TL; DR New detectors can discriminate water from explosives. Old ones couldn’t. None of them are doing IR spectroscopy.
Good ole step functions.
1 US liquid quart is about 946.353 milliliters.
Why not just say 1 litre and have the same limit as the rest of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_Conversion_Act
There is also nothing that precludes explosives from being non-toxic. Presumably your demise is near if you are carrying explosives through security. What do you care about heavy metal poisoning at that point?
My point is that security can never be strict enough to catch someone who's truly motivated and funded, without making it impossible to admit people at a reasonable pace, and the current rules don't really help with that except for cutting down on the riff raff terrorists. But maybe those are more common than a trained professional with high tech weapons, I don't know.
An explosion with real gravitas is far more difficult to execute than people imagine. (see also: people that think ANFO is a viable explosive) This goes a long way in explaining why truly destructive bombings are rare.
This robustness is why fighters in WW2 used cannons for guns. Poking a hole in the side won't do anything.
This is the classic HN developer arrogance and oversimplification, but let's accept this as true for argument's sake. It turns out that "riff raff terrorists" are the only ones we needed to stop as there's been no successful bombings of Western airlines in 25 years, and there have been foiled attempts.
The existence of master locksmiths (and door breaching charges) doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door at night.
have there?
The TSA checkpoints are the equivalent of moving all your belongings onto the lawn, and then locking the door.
Why bother with the plane when now you have potentialy a magnitude more people in the queue to TSA?
That aside, TATP is a terrible explosive. Weak, unstable, and ineffective. The ridicule is well-deserved.
Meanwhile, you get swabbed, the machine produces a false positive, the TSA drone asks you why the machine is showing a positive, you have no fucking idea why, and they just keep swabbing until they get a green light and everyone moves on with life.
It's about emotion not logic.
Personally, I don't know a single person who feels more secure due to the checks.
if normal people don’t know, criminals/terrorists do, and the materials are commonplace but not screened for, then everything about the current approach is wrong.
and when has a plane been brought down by the evil explosives or stable liquids in recent memory?
so the theatre put in place is just that, huh?
Then satisfy our curiosity and provide more details as to which are the liquid explosives and which common ones are not detected ? ;)
Have you considered just going long Palantir?
there's nothing to really understand
And speaking of theatre in the air, most Indian airlines will make an announcement of turbulence just before food service starts.
This is to make the sheep - strike that - passengers go back to their seats and sit down.
And it wouldn't surprise me if some of the detection technology were classified.
It would not be "great" if governments were more open about their detection capabilities; that would cause more terrorism attempts and is one of the stupidest things one could do here.
You know that TSA fails in 90-95% of cases and that crowds before it are a much jucier target?
You, sir, are a _conspiracy theorist_. Don't let that rotating door catch you on the way back in.
The big thing going from X-ray (2d) to CT (spin an X-ray machine around and take a ton of pictures to recreate a 3d image) did a lot to let security people see inside of a bag, but the hitch is that if you see a blob of gray is that water, shampoo or something else?
The recent advance that is letting this happen is machines who will send multiple wavelengths of X-ray through the material: since different materials absorb light differently, your machine can distinguish between materials, which lets you be more sure that that 2litre is (mostly) water, and then they can discriminate
Also, what do you make of jandrewrogers' comments above? (E.g. this one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46775931 )
TSA direct costs, passenger time wasted, flights missed, items confiscated.
All so no bombs on planes. But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....
So the TSA is either stunningly successful or a complete waste. I'd argue a complete waste, but hey, everyone in a TSA uniform drawing a paycheck us entitled to a different opinion.
AFAIK America has had plenty of shootings, and probably arson attacks too over that time period.
I agree on guns, but you can probably deal with that with much lower intensity security.
Boston marathon? The Madrid train bombings? 7/7? Ariana Grande?
Airport security has been stunningly successful.
And presumably they wouldn’t be shy about telling us if they had.
You can tell because some of the failed bombings (like the shoe bomber) failed because their plans were stupid to get around security, and if security wasn't there they would probably have used a normal bomb and succeeded
22 December 2001, American Airlines Flight 63 7 May 2002, China Northern Flight 6136 25 December 2009, Northwest Airlines Flight 253 2 February 2016, Daallo Airlines Flight 159
Of course even that has killed people.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_aircraft_hijackings
Plane hijacking has been on its way out anyway after the turmoil of the 1970s. And that has probably more to do with a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period, and b) a general sense that airplane hijacking isn’t actually that likely to advance your political goals. If you read the list above, you see people hijacking planes all kinds of dumb methods, hardly any of them involves carrying an actual bomb onto the plane.
Most plane hijackings/bombings were middle east related (e.g. linked to one of Palestinian liberation, al-qaeda, or isis)
Not sure i'd call that a stable region of the world, especially now. Perhaps though the people involved just realized it was an ineffective strategy.
Back in the day you needed to get onto TV and into newspaper headlines to get any attentions besides your neighbours. Today you can do that with a Facebook page and send your ideas worldwide.
And that works the back way too: instead of the news of bombing in some remote country you can't even find on the map you can get a funny cat videos to fill in.
The security used something I would describe as out of an Iron Man film, they were zooming around a translucent 3D view of my backpack. (It was on an LCD display instead of hovering midair, but I was still impressed. But the fact they let me keep the water was even more amazing, hahah.)
I just flew with two laptops in my backpack which I didn't have to take out for the first time (haven't flown in a while), with a custom PCB with a couple of vivaldi antennas sandwiched in between the laptops.
It was a real trip watching them view the three PCBs as a single stack, then automatically separate them out, and rotate them individually in 3D. The scanner threw some kind of warning and the operator asked me what the custom PCB was, so I had to explain to them it was a ground penetrating radar (that didn't go over well; I had to check the bag)
They don't advertise it, I found out by accident, trying to empty my water bottle by drinking when a security person told me to just put it together with the rest of my stuff. I had no idea that was a thing and was pretty confused.
What's is the evidence for believing so strongly that airports all over the world have been prohibiting large amounts of liquids due to widespread insanity?
So - you couldn’t take large amounts of liquids previously because some liquids in large amounts might be able to be weaponized. If you were caught with too much liquid (in sum total, or in containers that are too large) they’d throw it out and send you on your way.
But now that they have the ability to detect larger containers, they… do what? Declare that it’s safe and send you on your way with it still in your possession?
I watched a YouTube video about it a few months back and apparently the new devices, at least those used in Dublin, are much more accurate in detecting the difference between materials that previously looked similar to the machines, they can also rotate the images in 3d to get a look from different angles. Both of these make it easier to tell whether a substance is dangerous, apparently.
I know it's easy to get the impression that's not the case. But when your stop making fun of / belittle such events / persons / decision and be curious instead you start to realize that more often than not you are just missing a piece of information.
The truth oftentimes is just not interesting enough and not clickbait worthy.
I’ve always been under the impression that large containers of liquids were forbidden because they were potentially dangerous. If that hasn’t changed, and if the new technology is only about being able to better detect the presence of liquids in packed luggage, why have the limits on container size changed?
EDIT: So I see that the article says that it’s about being able to keep the liquids in your bag when going through security. But I thought liquids in large containers were forbidden from going through security entirely unless you had some kind of medical justification for them?
You could always easily work around the liquid amount restriction (multiple containers over multiple people), but if you still need a large container, it becomes harder.
I don't know if this is true or if a resealable plastic bag also works, for instance (that would be funny, wouldn't it?).
Howver if you rely on 10 people to take 100ml each that’s a far larger conspiracy and far less likely than one person taking 1l through.
Gunpowder doused in alcohol is, very famously for people interested in the history of rum, flammable if the alcohol is around 57.1% or higher, but straight alcohol/water without gunpowder is flammable at a lower strength than that.
It's common for people to carry large metal equipment cases (for cameras, etc.) onboard
She was absolutely shocked to find that liquid container limits were enforced in northern Europe. She would just put her makeup bag with cleansers and gels and everything in her carry-on and travel the world.
Anyway, signage required us to empty our refillable water bottles. Odd. Thankfully we eventually found a refill station.
The scanners flagged a still sealed can of ginger ale left over from our incoming flight. It was "fine" but she still swabbed it. Shrug.
The worst I had was in India, flying to the US. Not only was there the normal airport security (despite having come in on a connecting flight from within India), but when I got to the gate (with only minutes to spare), there was a whole TSA check at the gate itself. Bags x-rayed (again), metal detectors (again), guy with a wand (again), the whole deal. Just getting to the gate, I had to show my papers to at least 6 people; every time I turned down a new hallway. That was my far my worst airport experience.
But that is just one argument. My real anger at airport screening is that we have found it possible to fund and implement this level of screening, at massive monetary, human and privacy cost, but I can't go to my doctor and for a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?) get a body scan that does all the 3d segmentation, recognition, etc etc etc. We could actually save lives if we put effort into this technology for people instead of for a sense of security. But we probably won't. Because fear gets money but solving real problems that actually impact people doesn't.
[1] https://danemcfarlane.com/how-steve-jobs-turned-boot-time-in...
Airport screening of people doesn't yield those results. It's able to notice a big inorganic mass, or a chunk of metal, but it wouldn't spot a tumour, it gives nowhere near the level of detail that an MRI or CAT scan will give. The airport scanners are also much cheaper, coming in at ~250k USD rather than ~2m USD.
Even the xray machines used for bags, while expensive and capable, are designed to differentiate metals, liquids, and organics, not organics from other organics.
Both airport security and healthcare funding have their issues, but I don't think this is one of them.
Not really relevant, just makes the whole thing worse imho. There are new carryon bag scanners which are basically CT scans I think. Again not really relevant just makes it all worse. We could afford better medical care but we spending it on security theater and power tripping.
My point is that there's not actually any useful connection between the TSA scanners and medical scanners, it's comparing apples to oranges. By all means be angry about the lack of healthcare in the US, by all means blame other spending, but singling out the TSA is arbitrary.
Granted, I imagine an MRI scan still takes longer than 30 airport scans.
Interestingly the price of the body scanners and a typical MRI are in the same ballpark, from my experience and what I could glean online.
This always strikes me as a weird thing tech people believe about medicine. Full body scans just aren’t medically useful for otherwise healthy people. You’ll inevitably see something and it’s almost certainly going to be benign but might send you down the path of a lot of expensive and dangerous treatments or exploratory procedures. This is why there’s always so much debate about prostrate exam and breast exam age recommendations. There’s a tipping point where the risk of iatrogenesis outward the risk of disease.
Doctors need to get out of the headspace where an MRI is something reserved only to confirm the terminal cancer diagnosis.
Pretty much all the supposed issues are solved by taking the second scan a couple months in the future.
You also need context to appropriately interpret what you see.
Wait what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)
> In late 2025, the Mint halted the production of pennies for circulation, largely due to cost.
I guess it’ll be a few years before they’re out of circulation entirely.
First, if getting dropped off in a car (most American airports this is your only option), you must suffer being screamed at by traffic cops while trying to navigate a perpetually under construction dropoff area. You get one (1) peck on the cheek from mum before some uniformed individual waddles over to yell at you some more.
Then you must wait in line at a check in counter behind fifty families with 4 large luggage items each, despite the fact that you only have a backpack. Why? Because when you tried to do online check-in and boarding pass, the site broke / said no, and the self-service check-in kiosk at the airport still isn't switched on despite being installed a decade ago.
At the check-in counter, a person who knows less than you about the country you're traveling to will inform you as a matter of fact that you can't get ok the flight until you buy a return ticket, since that's what their binder says and they don't understand your visa. You must wait for a supervisor to come and verify that your visa is actually valid.
Before security, you're offered the rich person line if you have the money to pay for it. Literally advertised as a "white glove experience." If not well, into security with the rest of the cattle.
At security, you get to be screamed at by TSA for not knowing the exact procedures of this airport you've never been to. Why must they have to tell Passenger, who is one person they see ten thousand times a day, over and over again that you have to push your box onto the automated belt yourself, rather than let it be pushed on as a train with the other boxes. Passenger must be stupid. Surely it's not because of poor signage that Passenger doesn't know what to do. And by the way, take off your shoes and let us look at your genitals. Oh, you don't want us to look at your genitals? Well then we'll have to just grope every inch of your body, and nut check you for making us do our job in a slightly more annoying way. Just in case you're terrorist scum, we'll check if you have bomb making residue on your skin, while someone else opens your luggage and digs around in it so everyone else in like can see what your underwear looks like. At TSA we offer full service sexualized humiliation, guaranteed!
The dehumanization never ends. Once on the flight you are packed in like cattle, so tight you're rubbing shoulders with the person on your right and left, while your knees dig into the back of the person in front of you. You're served a tray of slop that you have to pay for now. Security took your water bottle, but when you ask for water on the flight, it's given to you in a tiny plastic cup, that's free if you're lucky. Now sit there quietly while we try to sell credit cards to this captured audience.
Finally you land and it's time to get off the plane! Oh actually no, the curtain is closed in your face. Silly peasant, you must watch the first class passengers leisurely pack their things and stroll off the plane. Only until the last one is off may the dirty peasants pass the fabric barrier.
This used to get people doing EU -> London flights. The EU rules had already been relaxed, but you got bitten by the extra restrictions when you went to fly back.
Like most things, flying is a complete shitshow, but do it often enough and you get used to it and all of the foibles.
Regularly flying hand luggage only is a grind as you're at the mercy of the lowest common denominator in terms of rules on what you can carry. When I had to visit a string of customers with one or two flights a day I had to submit expense claims with various toiletries purchased several times over, it was questioned by the finance department and they asked about whether I should check in a bag next time, but they stopped pushing when I said that adding a checked bag to my tickets would have been about 10 times more expensive than just buying things as and when I needed them.
Hugely wasteful but then so is flying, and most of my trips could have been replaced with a video call if it wasn't for touchy-feely corporate politics.
Water: I use a generic cycling bidon for travel. I empty it before security and they're happy with that. Any sane airport will have places to refill it for free, if they don't I can just buy a bottle of water and refill it. No airport I've traveled through has wanted to confiscate an empty cycling bidon and if they did it's cheap to replace.
> - fewer stoppages caused by liquids mistakes
> - fewer tray-handling steps per passenger
> - less variability at peak banks (which is where hubs like LHR get punished)
Didn't know ChatGPT has started to call itself "John Cushma".
Probably the act of defiance of pouring the contents onto the floor where there was no drain was implied to be disruptive and would have lead to harsher sanction for no reasonable payoff.
Security might have done, this is nothing to do with the border farce.
Horrible airport, avoid at all costs.
Share with us your best source for this.
Ok, now take that figure and deduct tax, housing, food, utilities and so on - how much do you think is disposable/saveable? And then take the typical cost of a last-minute replacement flight and compare those two numbers.
it would be incredibly inconvenient, and maybe missing other parts of a full vacation would set them back, but thats not the only reason people buy flights
...what? These already vary in the same airport literally by adjacent lanes...
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure a large part of it is just security theatre, but part of it is also just to be enough of a deterrent that a would-be terrorist chooses a different target.
Do you know that the 100 ml liquids gets scanned in the Heathrow airport? Many times they used to do a secondary scan too after the primary scan. I recall this very well because many times I was made to wait longer after my carry on arrived because they wanted to put the liquids through a secondary scan.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...
The use of "100ml" in airports is because using "3.519 fl oz" would be confusing to far more people. Even within the UK we use metric for small liquid measures like this (smaller liquid measures end up being weird stuff like "teaspoons" or "tablespoons").
And this isn't just because the UK uses a different fluid ounce to the US (100ml is 3.519 UK fluid ounces and 3.3814 US fluid ounces).
Anyone under the age of about 60 in the UK would had metric measurements taught to them at school as it became a mandatory to teach it in 1974. Many schools would have been teaching it already, and probably lots since the currency changed in 1971 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_Day).
The youth of today (as seen through the lens of my kids) are very metric, often defaulting to distances in meters and kilometers. Miles only seem to be used idiomatically, e.g. "he lives a few miles away".
I'm completely happy to switch between all of them not just because of my UK education covered them all, but I've lived for more than a year in the US, the UK and some European countries.
There are still plenty of examples of mixed measurement systems in the UK though.
Canned/bottled drinks are marked in ml, but a lot of that is due to the proximity to the EU and the previous ties to it. Open drinks are often sold in imperial measures (pints, etc) although spirits moved from fractions of a gill (imperial) to metric (25ml for a single, or 50ml for a double) in the mid 80s.
Of course the UK and US pints are different sizes (568ml and 473.176ml). Not just because the fluid ounces are different sizes as noted above, but also because the UK has 20 fluid ounces in a pint and the US 16 (of its) fluid ounces in a US pint.
For driving distances and speeds are based on miles, but for pedestrian distances you'll see a mixture of miles/yards or km/meters. Restricted heights (e.g. low bridges) or widths are covered in both feet/inches and meters given the number of European freight drivers on the roads here.
Occasionally you'll see some nonsense where a sign has displays both, and where the actual distance to something might be shown as "400 yards" it had almost certainly been rounded up/down to that whole number to make it simpler on the sign, but when it is converted to meters the converted value is used, so you see odd things like:
" Whatever it is 400 yards 365 meters "
(The UK traditionally used "metre" but that usage is quite rare now and we've mostly moved over to using "meter" like the US does.)
I'm surprised that the UK and US don't have different length miles (the US did have a different length "foot" but the "Survey foot" was discontinued in 2023).
1) Bodyscanners: body scanners are a scam 2) They took away my 100ml contain that clearly had less than 1 cm of liquid in it because it wasn't clearly labelled as "100ml". Any idiot could know it was like 10ml full. 3) They used to do actual xray basically on people. 4) You have to re-security to transfer on connections! You already could have blown up the incoming plane, why does this even matter?
I don't go there anymore. Waste of time and all security theatre without common sense.
E.g. 1 day use contact lenses and prescription creams all having to fit in a tiny plastic bag. So I'm happy for this change.
The US mandates that you have to go through TSA approved security before getting on a flight to the US.
Either the security at your European airport wasn't good enough, or the transit at Heathrow allowed you to access to things that invalidated the previous security screening and so it had to be done again.
The bonus is that if you get to go through US Immigration at the departure airport then you can often land at domestic terminals in the US and the arrivals experience is far less tortuous. I flew to the US with a transit in Ireland a few times and it was so much nicer using the dead time before the Ireland -> US flight to clear immigration rather than spending anything from 15 minutes to 4 hours in a queue at the arrival airport in the US (all depending on which other flights arrived just before yours).
I had the luck of traveling by plane quite a bit before 2001 and I can tell you it was much more pleasurable. Now, the issues now-a-days are not only due to the security circus, it's true. But it does play a major role.
I wonder if they'll walk this back? If you put a 2L water bottle in the overhead compartment and hit enough turbulence, it could open and drench the entire compartment and other people's luggage.
100 watts for an hour ~= 36000 watts for ten seconds. Every fully charged laptop roughly has enough energy to bring an automobile up to highway speed (once). How many of these laptops exist on a typical flight?
And what would you suggest be done to reduce the risk? Asking passengers to travel without phones or laptops isn't realistic.
Skyphone installation by the airlines led to "flight mode" because the horror of not paying is far more important than safety.
All of this fake, useless theatre undermines real security and makes us less safe while picking our pockets.
Fluids to bring down a plane? FFS every human is equipped with a bladder. Why was this charlatanism ever tolerated at all?
It's an attack that never happened and wouldn't. It's nuts.
They should have banned underwear because the underwear bomber /did/ happen. But sure, that's awkward and would impact revenue, (I don't wanna go nude so I won't fly unless I have to), so the ridiculousness of doing so triumphed where it did not with water and shoes.
Lock on the cockpit door was worthwhile (unless the threat is a psychotic German copilot, worked bad then). Also the successful terrorist strategy had expired useless even before the end of its first use on 9/11 as passengers found out, realised new rules: fight back now, hard.
Bastards at Heathrow stole a sealed jar of Fortnum & Mason jam from me. For security! Because onion jam could blow up a plane. FFS. But sure, you could buy the same stuff once through security and take it on the plane at inflated prices. Where there was a financial incentive to do so and a secial interest to lobby for it, the idiocy stopped. In 5 meters.
The purpose of these moronic rules was /not/ what you think it was. It was just a sequence of moronic compromises around dumb ideas influenced by special interest. You can't respect it and respect your own intelligence. Security is actually important, do better.
other asian carriers will say they can't be in overhead compartments
It seems like something that is high risk during flight shouldn't be left to passenger compliance with spoken instructions.
(PS. Still not going to fly there)
I travel a lot - and never take out any liquids. Have nail clippers and scissors in my carry-on.
Once I even had an opinel pocket knife in my laptop bag for a couple of months.
Travelled through Tokyo, Taipei, SFO, DEN, PHX, LAX, BOS, JFK, FRA, AMS, MUC, LHR - nobody noticed.
I seriously had forgotten it was there, so I don't do that now, but still...
Also, no large water bottles or similar. Unless on domestic flights in Japan, where this is totally fine.
IDK - security theater. But if it helps.
Maybe they would encourage more people to risk it and hope they don’t get caught, but a vast majority of these people aren’t criminals. When I was a kid I would always take a Swiss Army knife with me on vacation. That was my favorite thing to back, and I could look like a hero when an opportunity came up where it was useful. No longer.