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Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

bbc.com

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Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#661

Post by alistairSH »

Waterluvian wrote: post #617
fc417fc802 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

This sounds like my experiences in Toronto. It’s less adversarial than the experiences I've had in the U.S. My experiences were basically a form of, “Hey we saw something that caught our attention and might be an issue. Let's work through addressing this." One case it was a handful of 3.5" galvanized nails. "Whoops. Okay, so, this bag used to be my makeshift toolbag. My other one ripped and I had to get one last minu…

Meanwhile, the TSA looks at me like I'm, at best an annoyance, and at worst a criminal, when I ask them to inspect my camera kit manually (film, not digital). And that inspection consists of swabbing 35mm film canisters - like, the shell of a 35mm roll is going to tell them anything useful?!?! It's a complete sham.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#662

Post by CGMthrowaway »

pelagicAustral wrote: post #445

If you think you had it bad all these years, you should come and visit the Falkland Islands. I will be brief, but I will explain what going through the Mount Pleasant Airport (MPN) feel like for the average visitor. For added context: Only one flight by a commercial airline a week on Saturday, comes in around 1300, departs around 1500. You miss it, you wait another week. - The terminal is extremely small, the plane t…

Mount Pleasant Complex is primarily a military base, not a normal civilian airport. That explains almost everything you’re experiencing. Civilian flights are effectively guests on a military base

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#663

Post by pc86 »

traceroute66 wrote: post #569
michaelt wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Airport prices in the UK for recreational travel work like so: 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.

> Taxi enters drop-off area for 30 seconds: £7 To be fair, I entirely understand the absolute necessity for this. The reason for its introduction is before hand the PHVs (Uber etc.) of this world would, instead of using the car parks, go up to the drop-off area and wait there. Because there was no charge and no penalty, what they would do is drop off a passenger and then sit there waiting for their next job to ping o…

Rather than charge everyone £7 or more for a drop off, wouldn't it make more sense to charge the people abusing it an absurd amount? I'd much rather see a £25 fee after 90 seconds and an additional £125 fee after 5 minutes than £7 for 30 seconds.

It seems less about making things more efficient and more about just squeezing a little bit out of money out of everyone.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#664

Post by runarberg »

jen20 wrote: post #393
runarberg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t think that is true at all. There have been numerous hijacked planes since 9/11 including two in the USA just this decade. 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…

Of the two in the US this decade, one did not have a cockpit door as the plane was too small, and the other was by an off-duty pilot sitting in the cockpit…

Yes, if you read the list prior to 9/11 majority of all plane hijackings were equally dumb. And hardly any involved bringing an actual bomb on board (usually lying about having one was enough).

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#665

Post by ghaff »

NL807 wrote: post #465
kstenerud wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's about making people feel safe. 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…

>It's about making people feel safe. It adds stress. I fondly remember flying in the 80s vs today. Travelling back then was more chill.

Just a lot more people are flying today. Better information flows about flights help to some degree but more planes that are more packed are on the other side of the ledger.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#666

Post by pc86 »

direwolf20 wrote: post #593
0x3f wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think people don't want to drop off at the airport? There's literally a multi storey full of short term parking at every Heathrow terminal. They wouldn't fit in the drop off area at all. You are charged to be at the baggage claim. The airline pays it on your behalf, from your fare.

you are not charged to be at the baggage claim

If you can find a way to utilize the baggage claim services without paying someone at some point I'd love to hear it.

Just because you're not handing someone your card as you walk up to it doesn't mean you're not paying for it.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#667

Post by pelagicAustral »

CGMthrowaway wrote: post #662
pelagicAustral wrote: post #445

If you think you had it bad all these years, you should come and visit the Falkland Islands. I will be brief, but I will explain what going through the Mount Pleasant Airport (MPN) feel like for the average visitor. For added context: Only one flight by a commercial airline a week on Saturday, comes in around 1300, departs around 1500. You miss it, you wait another week. - The terminal is extremely small, the plane t…

Mount Pleasant Complex is primarily a military base, not a normal civilian airport. That explains almost everything you’re experiencing. Civilian flights are effectively guests on a military base

MoD flights are managed by the Military on Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday. They use a larger aircraft where check in can take 10 minutes in the same process described for the Saturday flight. 190 people can easily be processed in about 60 minutes with none of the friction that is added by the private company managing the security.

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#668

Post by runarberg »

bawolff wrote: post #228
runarberg wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don‘t think that is true at all. There have been numerous hijacked planes since 9/11 including two in the USA just this decade. 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…

> a) the relative political stability of the post cold war period 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.

I made sure to say relative political stability.

I don‘t like it (in fact I hate it), but capitalism won the cold war. And communist revolutionaries went dormant as a result. The cold war brought a different kind of stability, particularly to Europe, and the end of it created a massive turmoil (mainly along nationalistic lines rather then political ideological ones).

In hindsight perhaps I should have been more specific and said “relative political stability along ideological lines.”

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#669

Post by vablings »

edm0nd wrote: post #87
jandrewrogers wrote: post #71

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. The…

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…

TSA Is not great, I have been groped by TSA twice, I have never been pat down by any European airport staff

Re: Heathrow scraps liquid container limit

#670

Post by jancsika »

xeyownt wrote: post #546
wongarsu wrote: post #448

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On the other hand, if somebody said "I'm here for terrorism" and the immigration officer laughed that off, imagine the shitstorm if that person turns out to be a terrorist. For the individual employee the cost of wasting someone's time by escalating the case and detaining them is zero, the potential cost of letting someone slip by is realistically tiny but potentially huge

The point is that the situation must be really crazy if we reach a point where someone (mostly foreigner) saying "tourist" is being confused as to saying "terrorist". Airport are full of tourists, and exactly 0 person on the planet would reply with "terrorist".

So when an immigration officer makes an error parsing the tourist's words, you think the security protocol ought to be to let the tourist pass through the gate?
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