Are we secure?

I cannot be the only person to think that airport security has got out o hand in places.   This is not to say that I do not value the need for security but simply that some parts appear to serve no useful function but do cause inconvenience for passengers and cost for operators.

A few years ago I was lucky enough to get bumped up into first class on a flight to San Francisco.   Here there were very comfy seats and a glass of champagne was thrust into your hand almost before you could sit down.   All through the flight bottles were left out for you to help yourself.  And when it was time to at there was a fine table cloth with very nice bone china plates - and plastic knives and forks.   Why plastic, I asked?   I was told it was FAA regulations because metal cutlery was considered to be a security risk.   Presumably in a way that broken bottles or broken china was not.

That bit of nonsense got changed, but other examples abound.   British airports are obsessive about ensuring that departing and arriving passengers cannot mix.   In some parts of Heathrow this actually means staffed junction with movable partitions where the inbound and outbound routes cross with one rote blocked while the other is open - a bit like a level crossing on the railway.

Yet most other airports don't have this worry.   In Amsterdam, from where I am writing this blog, incoming and outgoing passengers mix happily making a cleaner design of airport and a reduced call on staff.   If they can manage it, why can't UK airports?   And please don't say it's about security because it's all airside and everyone has been checked through security somewhere.   You can't get there without either having a valid boarding pass, having been screened, or having arrived on a different flight, having bee screened before you boarded there.  Nor can it be about customs, for the same reason.   And if it's about immigration then you have to go through passport control again if you want to leave.

It's just another example of a failure to consider security from an overview and to understand that the chain i only as strong as its weakest link.   And don't mind anyone else's cost or convenience.