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."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/investigation-breaches-...
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.
Once at a security checkpoint to a museum in Shanghai, they saw my water bottle, and then told me to take it out and drink from it.
In the 90's USA was sensible. I was flying with a thermos of hot coffee in my carry on. As soon as they took out the thermos and felt the heat radiating from the lid the agent said, "I don't think they would heat it", smiled and passed me thru.
Now when I fly I have to be careful. When they ask purpose of visit I say sightseeing. I used to say tourist, but with my accent that once caused alarm when the agent thought I said terrorist.
Was it just you? Or do they apply the same policy for every visitor with a bottle of liquid?
This is/was fairly common, I've experienced it on the Chinese subway a few times and I've seen a few clips of it happening online. No idea if it's official policy or not, though.
Just a guess but at a museum I assume they're looking out for vandals. If it's a water bottle the counterpart would be something like concentrated sodium hydroxide in which case a single sip is sufficient.
Not sure how they would handle dye in a paper coffee cup though.
I saw them do this to a few others in line.
So if a suicide bomber can drink explosives, they will be fine. As long as it's not poisonous within a few hours, should be no issue.
That is the way!
There was this guy at the Mexican border who was asked to do the same. He died from heroin overdose.
I still think it's funny.
I flew into the UK once with a small nerf pistol. Going in, no problem. Going out I was asked to remove it, lol.
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.
There are countries that for whatever reason do not allow lighters on airplanes.
One time my bag was searched furiously because they saw a lighter on the machine, but had trouble locating it. Took two people about 15 minutes. Finally found it. It was very tiny.
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.
> Do you think they find a white guy flying out of China to be a likely terrorist?
What does skin color have to do with this? And yes, oppressed groups in China, like the Uyghurs, have support in the west. Among white people.
Maybe the winning strategy is comprehensive mass surveillance which flags you in a database long before even showing up at the airport and then the security theater just provides a suitable pretense for an arrest.
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.
its very much about looks. Uk airports (used to?) seize aftershave in bottles that are the shape of grenades. Its very obvious what they are (made of glass, branded, spray out aftershave) but they are banned nonetheless.
I've flown with someone who simply said she has prescription medication with her.
I mean it was the truth. It was legitimately prescription medication. In this case. But I can imagine someone could lie.
Yeah I also regularly bring a razorblade (for my old fashioned safety razor). I have got caught once but it's worth the risk of wasting a few minutes.
If this was really about security, it would be set up so that just deliberately breaking the rules for the sake of minor convenience actually had some consequences.
If I wanted to blow up a plane with liquid explosives I would just... Try a few times. If you get caught, throw the bottle away, get on the plane, and try again next week.
A plastic water bottle isn’t triggering a tsa pre check metal detector. I’m totally doing this next trip
I've never done that yet I've never had any trouble finding water past security or even on a plane?!
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.
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.
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.
Tangential, but given the myriad externalities of air transport, such low fares for flying are deeply unethical and a perverse incentive that we are going to need to address one day.
Take an empty, open water bottle through security and then fill it up at the free water fountains!
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.
But hey, at least the luggage carts are free…
In Edinburgh the (small, we often need 2) luggage carts are now £2.
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.
Are you saying they fined you for picking someone up in the drop off area? If so that's pretty wild. It's all just traffic at the end of the day.
Yes. They have paid sneaks standing around and the second you do something like that they radio to the people who control the barriers so you can’t get out without paying it. Just completely f*cked state of affairs.
https://www.manchesterairport.co.uk/terms-and-conditions/dro...
“ 1.3 Breach of these terms and conditions may result in Parking Charges up to £100. An additional fee of up to £70 may be applied for the costs of debt recovery.
9.1 Drop-off only: The Drop Off Zone may only be used to drop-off passengers and not for pick-up. There are separate designated areas for the pick-up of passengers. Use of the Drop Off Zone for any other purpose will result in the issuance of a Parking Charge.
I do that all the time in certain airports when the drop off is essentially empty with 0 line but pickup is a half mile row of cars.
Some airports charge money for water after security.
Others disallow even empty bottles at security screening
> Others disallow even empty bottles at security screening
I haven't encountered this. Could you name some?
> 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.
So... what's not to love?
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.
>do feel like they're doing something important
First I agree TSA is mostly theater... however if you HAD to have it, you want the people to work like this. I might be old-school but I think everyone should have pride and responsibility in their work. Even if from the outside it is meaningless.
100% no reason to be a bully, that is not pride/responsibility. Every job has ass assholes.
> 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.
> Suicide bombers are probably the main vector that TSA helps avoid even if they miss some items sometimes.
Not really, but this is because there are pretty much no suicide bombers anywhere in airports. They are incredibly rare.
But if you're a suicide bomber, by the time you get to the TSA checkpoint you can do a ton of damage inside a terminal during a holiday season when all airports are packed. Until then no one is stopping you.
> Now? Short of the hijackers getting guns on the plane, passengers will absolutely fight back.
I'm not even sure guns would hold some wannabe heroes back.
> they don't stop weapons (lots of airports outside the US have simple metal detectors for that.)
There are 3D printed guns.
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.
You are better off using a lathe to make a gun.
You still need metal parts, notably a gun barrel capable of holding extreme pressures until the bullet gets up to speed. That isn’t plastic. The grip and frame might be plastic, but not the barrel.
This is either incorrect or only technically correct. In the context of smuggling a weapon through a metal detector at a checkpoint there are nonferrous and even entirely plastic variants. Possessing them is generally illegal because essentially the only purpose is for assassinations.
the handle on roll type luggage. not the actual handle but that is where you would hide a long piece of thick wall tube. not that a long piece of would be nessacery. a short one would do, the point being the metal detectors do not stop you from bringing metal into the airport.
Of course. Lots of metal goes through the detectors. The point is that the detectors “see” it and that’s then your chance to catch it. Whether you actually do or not is another question. But 3d printing a gun doesn’t give you a “plastic gun.” Btw, this is the same reason why the “Glocks are plastic guns that go through metal detectors unseen” stuff in the 1980s was always a myth. Glocks have a polymer frame but they always have a metal barrel.
Don't you still need metal bullets for the 3d printed gun?
Those don't generally have any ferrous components.
yes but the spring in the magazine does.
also the rails on the lower, the barrel, etc.
Not in the context of someone smuggling a weapon through a security checkpoint. At least not unless they're certain that it's small enough not to trigger the detector.
That said I will note that it is generally illegal to possess such nonferrous weapons regardless of circumstance.
No idea. I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false.
The evidence is in US law. Because they would be undetectable, 3d printed guns are required to have some metal inserted into it to be legal (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D-printed_firearm#United_Stat...). I think a guy who can 3d print a gun and wants to bring it onto a plane could probably skip that step;)
"I only replied to the guy saying that "metal detectors stop weapons". Which is false."
Taken in a strict boolean sense, yes, but real-world policy is rarely boolean, and mostly about tradeoffs and how many nines of reliability you want to spend on.
Metal detectors will catch the vast, vast majority of guns ever produced, which is their whole point of existence.
> they don't stop bombings (there are much better targets for that, which don't involve killing the bomber),
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.
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.
Once you pass security, you can buy as many very flammable bottles of alcohol as you'd like
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.
Ironically, both India and China forbid lighters on planes. Famously you see a collection of them around the bins just outside the airport as all the smokers leave them for others.
Flammable liquid and all high temperature lighters are forbidden, as are Li-ion batteries over 100kWh.
You can buy up to 5L up to 70% alcohol after security, no? Sounds pretty flammable
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.
It's easier to deal if it's in carry on bag. This is why batteries are forbidden in checked luggage. Once it all burns the airplane has got to land asap and it's an emergency.
My checked luggage did not pass xray multiple times because they detected powerbanks. I had to come back and take it out. However it also did pass xray a couple times with powerbanks so it's not a reliable system.
Alternatively, I checked 3-4 20k mAh powerbanks in my luggage on my flight to Utah and it never got flagged or detected.
Most would-be attackers are not suicidal, I suppose. You would have to be in order to start a fire on a plane that you are on.
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).
There's a pretty strong trend in that timeline of two types of "bombings":
(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.
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'.
None the less, this is still effectively an entrance checkpoint to a 'secure area' aka the large airport you're flying to, as you've now already gone through security.
"In the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled. It's all security theater."
Over here, it's G4S pork barrel contracts.
> the US, the TSA is just a government jobs program for the lowly skilled or unskilled.
I thought that was the US military?
I thought that was the US police force?
TSA is much more skilled than the security people employed by the airlines that proceeded them.
While still theatre to a degree, that was 11 years ago.
Do you have evidence that anything has changed?
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 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.
"largely" is true, but because planes are more than 3x safer people are still being wrong when they fear plane travel.
People try to treat "largely" as "fully" and that fails.
It's not about statistics. It's about control and knowledge. I know if a car I'm in is driving safely. I can ask the driver to calm down or let me off. In a plane I have nothing. I'm just sitting in a tin can, no idea whether the pilot is flying responsibly or not. No idea whether the landing is routine as hell or kinda sketch. Even if i could talk to the pilot the only thing we can do is land.
And have you thought about airplane landing? It's insane. This big clunky metal bird full of literal jet fuel coming in at like 400kmh or whatever, bouncing around on the tarmac as it's desperately trying to regain control and slow down.
Honestly I don't see how a rational person could not be stressed out in that situation. Yes we all know it usually works out, but we also know if it doesn't work out we're very likely going up in a ball of fire. And no matter what the stats say it doesn't feel like a safe situation. It feels like a near death experience. Seriously. Every time I fly I mentally come to terms with the fact that I might die. Every time we take off and land I'm feeling the bumps and jerks, listening to the sounds and wondering whether this is normal.
I fly at least a few times a year, and I don't take any drugs for it, but I fucking hate it.
> I know if a car I'm in is driving safely. I can ask the driver to calm down or let me off.
Do you know that all the other cars on the road that might hit yours are being driven safely?
How do you feel about busses and trains?
> And have you thought about airplane landing? It's insane. This big clunky metal bird full of literal jet fuel coming in at like 400kmh or whatever, bouncing around on the tarmac as it's desperately trying to regain control and slow down.
A car is a metal box full of fuel kept under control by four rubber balloons.
At least a plane is heavily monitored for safety, checked before every flight, and controlled by highly trained professionals.
> Honestly I don't see how a rational person could not be stressed out in that situation.
A rational person would not be worried. The fear is very much an irrational reaction and a psychological problem that a few people have. Most of us will happily go to sleep on a long flight and our biggest fear is boredom.
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.
My perception is that drink driving is now pretty rare in the UK.
The biggest dangers I see regularly on the road is simple aggressive driving. Overtaking too much, tailgating, multiple lane changes in one go (on motorways), not driving slower in bad conditions.....
To add to this, here's a piece of anecdotal evidence. I've watched a lot of traffic accident videos in my life, and in the vast majority of the videos including two vehicles, both drivers are at fault.
They may not be legally at fault, I don't really worry too much about that, but by my judgement they could have avoided the accident by paying attention or driving slower or driving less aggressively etc.
Same goes for pedestrians by the way. The absolute vast majority of pedestrians who get hit by cars could have avoided it by paying attention and taking some responsibility for their own safety.
> It's about making people feel safe.
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 thought so too. But having talked to a few people who are generally afraid of flying, they absolutely do take re-assurance from the security theatre. They are very much not interested in having the ease of subverting this security explained to them.
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.
They're not complaining on the bus...
The government who wages the wars and brings its terrors home invades people's privacy and comfort in the small amount of time they have away from the toll they put to pay their taxes, and the people are thankful, after all, all of it is for their safety.
Airport security never makes me feel safe. It makes me feel violated and anxious.
I haven't really flown before 9/11, but I have used the subway in my city daily both before and after they installed metal detectors and started randomly asking people to put their bags through a scanner. I'm deeply nostalgic for not having to deal with this utter bullshit.
Yeah as we've seen with MH370, literally nothing stops the pilot from committing mass-murder-suicide at any point. We just need to trust that they're not feeling particularly depressed that day.
It reminds be of how after a fire at a tube station a lot of people decided to commute by motorbike because of fear of fire.
> It's about making people feel safe.
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?'
See also all the other myriad types of compliance theatre.
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.
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...
I flew out of the UK twice in relatively short succession in ~2018 and the first time was out of London City: did not have to take off my shoes. I was pleasantly surprised by this and concluded common sense had prevailed and it was no longer necessary. The second time was Gatwick, and based on my prior experience I did not take off my shoes. I got yelled at because "everybody knows you have to take off your shoes at the airport!". Then got subjected to an extra search of my luggage as punishment. Of course there was a razor in my bag of toiletries (one of those Gilette cartridge ones with a million blades - not an oldschool safety razor) and promptly 'got got' for that as it could have potentially injured the person searching my belongings. 0/10 would not recommend.
> 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.
Mitivated terrorists pivoted to driving cars into crowds and shootings.
Don't forget strapping knives to their hands and slashing into crowds.
Have we protected against the motivated terrorist, or only the motivated terrorist on an airplane?
Is your contention that there haven't been any terrorist attacks, therefore airport security isn't effective?
Because over the last 25 years, there have been a _lot_ of "successful" terrorist attacks in the West, and none of them were on planes.
My point is that if improved airport security just shifts terrorist attacks to other places, the overall safety benefit is not as great as it may at first seem.
It’s a $12 bn/yr production. I don’t think that’s perfectly acceptable. Let’s invest in loudspeakers if all we’re doing is shouting at people.
> 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?
to nitpick, the 100ml rule doesn't come from 9/11 but from 2006 attack attempts
> 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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...
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.
> TATP you could synthesize on a plane is entirely inadequate to bring down a plane
Even a small fire can down a plane, especially when distant from diversion airports.
No, you can’t bring down a plane with a small fire. If that was possible terrorists would use a newspaper and a lighter.
They don't block lithium batteries, so...
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.
This kind of thinking is as legitimate as believing lie detectors work, i.e., not at all.
Israel is using those methods in their airport security, quite successfully given their threat level. The problem is that it does not scale well and requires very well trained and attentive personnel.
{{citation needed}}
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.
Here's an article that talks about Dual-energy CT [1]. And another one talking about material discrimination using DECT [2].
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spectral_imaging_(radiography)
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dual-energy_X-ray_absorptiomet...
See also beepblap's comments further below where they elaborate on this a bit (it's not just simple dual-energy xray apparently).
Hm, isn't it enough to just detect water and flag everything else as suspicious?
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.
> 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.
Cynically, it's so they can sell you another bottle on the secure side. If they spend money to give themselves a working mechanism to distinguish water from not-water, they lose the ability to create retail demand.
> Average people have never heard of them because they aren’t in popular lore.
Everything I know about liquid explosives I learned from Die Hard 3.
Funnily enough, that’s also all the people who made the rules in the first place knew
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...
These liquids show up as slightly different colors in the new CT scan machines and this can finally be reliably detected by software.
This is also why a bunch of airports no longer ask you to take electronics out of your bags.
> extremely powerful explosives that are stable water-like liquids.
My understanding is that those are detected by the bag swabs.
I _thought_ that this was to stop people mixing their own explosives _on_ the plane? There was a whole court case in the UK about how people had smuggled it onboard and then were going to make it in the toilet.
They would need and ice bath, which is somewhat impractical.
Schiphol at Amsterdam had this for a year or so, you could bring any type of liquid and leave everything in the bag. But they reverted the liquid rule, if I remember correctly, because of the confusion it caused.
This happened due to a change in regulation in Europe.
Some airports, like AMS or MUC, invested on new machines with higher detection capabilities, and decided to allow all liquids and improve efficiency in boarding. The EU updated the rules claiming those new machines were still not sufficient and airports should go back to forbidding liquids.
It was a mess. I remember flying from MUC and being allowed all liquids and on my return flight, also from EU, when trying to fly with a normal water bottle, security people looked at me wondering what the f I was doing: "Don't you know liquids are not allowed, sir!?"
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.
Security theater and conditioning people into accepting invasions of privacy
In Zurich, you can buy Swiss army knives in the secure zone.
That's ok - 6cm blades are allowed. You can also carry it in a cabin luggage anyways.
realistically any broken glass bottle can be used as a blade.
I thought the point of replacing all the xray scanners with CT scanners was to be able to detect this sort of thing?
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?
Won't asking people to take a swig solve a bunch of those issues?
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.
Airliners are also pretty robust against damage. Although they are not designed to resist explosions, everything is redundant.
This robustness is why fighters in WW2 used cannons for guns. Poking a hole in the side won't do anything.
> 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.
> and there have been foiled attempts.
have there?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Failed_airliner_bombi... ->
2001: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Airlines_Flight_63_(2...
2006: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...
... which is what we're discussing here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_repercussions_due_to_...
2009: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northwest_Airlines_Flight_253
2010: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2010_transatlantic_aircraft_bo...
2016: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daallo_Airlines_Flight_159
2017: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Australian_aeroplane_bomb...
And nobody's going to fall for that "open the cockpit door or I kill the flight attendant" again.
> The existence of master locksmiths (and door breaching charges) doesn't mean you shouldn't lock your door at night.
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?
So how does that explain I can take 10 100ml bottles and an empty 1l bottle through security but not 1 full 1l bottle?
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.
Good ole step functions.
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.
1 US liquid quart is about 946.353 milliliters.
>>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.
The surface level answer is "for Ronald Reagan reasons":
You can't, at least not where I live
The security theatre is there to make people feel safe.
It's about emotion not logic.
...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.
And to make some people richer.
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.
> 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.
> . 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.
Its not just for explosives, by the way. Its also for solvents - for example, mercury, which could be used to weaken the airframe very easily.
And yet .. nothing ever seems to happen! Even though it's so easy.
That means one of at least two things. Either the terrorists are stupid and easily impressed by the security theater. Or there are just not that many bad ombres out there trying to take down airplanes. Or something else I can't think of.
Any thoughts?
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.
Backpack can have metal reinforcements that would make a proper weapon too, Same broken glass bottles and what not.
The entire point is futile and pointless.
how does it add confusion?
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?
I wonder if the improvements can detect trigger mechanisms better rather than testing the liquid itself.
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.
> Everyone, including the bad guys, knows all of this.
Then satisfy our curiosity and provide more details as to which are the liquid explosives and which common ones are not detected ? ;)
> It would be great if governments were more explicit about precisely what all of this theater is intended to prevent.
Have you considered just going long Palantir?
there's nothing to really understand
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'.
You mean Tony didn't really make £20m in his first year out of office from just giving speeches? I mean, that's what his tax return says?
You, sir, are a _conspiracy theorist_. Don't let that rotating door catch you on the way back in.
Security theatre.
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.
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.
> The harder you make it to down or hijack a plane, the fewer downed planes you will see.
You know that TSA fails in 90-95% of cases and that crowds before it are a much jucier target?
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
There's a whole ton of people taking about MRI -- MRIs are a completely universe than CT/X-rays
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.
It wasn't -- was just noting that people keep saying "MRI", when there's no 5T fields around most security checkpoints
it has been such a godsend flying out of Frankfurt where they have the new scanners and you don't have to empty out your bag anymore. So much smoother. Then I fly back and get all annoyed at the other airports. I was told Oslo airport is holding out until it becomes regulation to use the new scanners. Security-Theater is still what it is. It is super weak imho, despite never having seriously attempted a heist or trying to get contraband on a plane. I miss the good old days where you handed your luggage to a guy just before boarding the plane.
Germany has a very sad and weak airport security story. The security personal are hired and paid by the state (Land), and thus the state plans their capacity and workflow. The airport owner (i.e. FRAport) has no say in their internal work organization, as it is basically contracted out policework. For whatever reason, most german Airports I regularly use, use the same machine and broken workflow: There is only a limited amount of containers to put your stuff in to go through the x-ray, and the machine itself has an integrated container-return system using conveyors. As a result, each machine has only a single small table with a container dispenser to serve passengers. On that tiny table, only 2-3 people at the same time can get undressed, get water out of their handlugagge etc. Waiting passengers behind them are blocked.
I contrast that with my experience in Spain: Several meters before the machines, there is a large amount of unoccupied, huge tables with containers stacked everywhere, so everybody can get undressed and pack their stuff into the container trays at their pace of choice. Staff assists and tells the rules to individuall travellers. Once you are done sorting your stuff into the containers, taking off your belt etc - only THEN you take the containers towards the x-ray conveyor line. So there is hardly any blocking the line. Instead of a container-return system, a single human stacks the containers past the scan and returns them to the beginning. This is so much more effective.
Classic example of government run workflows: No one cares to optimize the workflow, and the one who would benefit from a speedup (the airport and the airlines) in terms of increased sales, have no say in the process.
>so everybody can get undressed
Wait what? What are you removing?
Flying in the US this week I removed nothing but a winter coat. Everything went on as normal, nothing out of bags, jut coat off.
Probably the same thing as you, but lost in translation. Removing jackets, maybe shoes, winter coats, hoodies etc.
Not undressed in the "everything but your underwear" sense.
Exactly. Plus belts, watches, removing phone/wallet/headphones from your pockets etc. And taking Laptop OUT of your luggage onto separate trays, your liquids into a clear plastic bag, etc. Very often, during that process, the staff members recognize people having liquid containers with more than 100ml capacity (shampoo, hair gel, etc.) and can tell the people that they can't take it aboard etc. I happen to fly frequently to what are busy tourist destinations, and especially older people seem to be completely unaware of any regulations what you can and can't carry along - even though those regulation have been in place for 20+ years. That is very time intensive.
Can this X Ray bit flip memory or damage NAND?
Super Mario 64 airport security speedrun strat
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)
As far as I know, it's not. You're now specifically told to not take liquid out of your luggage.
At least that was the situation when I flew out of London Gatwick last time - they had people going up and down before the scanners admonishing people to leave everything in their bags to avoid delay.
Dual energy x ray has been around forever though, like decades.
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
25,000? Interesting. Is there anywhere I can read up on this?
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over security theater at airports? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
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.
I have a rock that keeps tigers away. For 30 years I have not encountered any tigers. That’s a pretty good record.
To answer the parent question, no not even close.
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.
Other then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Northern_Airlines_Flight... how often has anyone ever set fire to a plane (not counting bombs that caused fires). Is there even a single other example.
I agree on guns, but you can probably deal with that with much lower intensity security.
> But somehow also no bombs at sports events or music concerts, or on trains or subways, or courthouses or....
Boston marathon? The Madrid train bombings? 7/7? Ariana Grande?
Airport security has been stunningly successful.
But we don't have intense security checks at concerts, trains, or at marathon events as a result, do we?
I don't know where you live, but where I live, we do.
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.
Having a lot of experience with trains too, I can confirm this.
In Europe the major exceptions are Eurostar (Channel Tunnel) and the Spanish high-speed network, where the major stations are like airports, with airport-style security, airport-style departure lounges, and waiting. As I understand it, the extra security is at least partly an outcome of the Madrid terrorist bombings of 2004. Terribly self-defeating.
In France by contrast you can still arrive 2 minutes before the TGV departs.
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're very fortunate, you'll have to teach us your ways some day
There are even restaurants in London you can't get to without going through a scanner. E.g. half the restaurants at The Shard.
But to give an idea of how idiotic it is: Those are on the 32nd and 33rd floor. Next door is the Shangri La hotel of The Shard, where you can walk straight in and take the lift to the 31st (no scanners), and change to a lift for the 52nd floor (no scanners).
Last I checked, in the US there has not been a single instance of the TSA detecting and preventing a terror attack in its 25 year history.
And presumably they wouldn’t be shy about telling us if they had.
I assume they have some deterent value.
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)
I don't think that the question is really "removing all checks". It's rather "are all those expensive machines necessary?".
I mean, they do find a ton of guns and ammunition. I wouldn't be so sure.
Bombings are pretty rare. The last succesful plane bombing of a plane departing from the united states that killed people was in 1962.
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
Ok so cockpit door was locked and thus nobody can hijack plane.
Of course even that has killed people.
I thonk it has more to do with process and pilot crew closing their door.
This is an asinine take - it literally has nothing to do with the theater we deal with at the airports in America
What's the actual reason then?
Locking the door of the cockpit, actual on the ground policing in terms of monitoring terror cells.
Better cooperation between intelligence and law enforcement agencies
How many man hours and how much money have we wasted over SREs at <tech company>? Has it been a worthwhile trade off?
- Half kidding but this is what a lot of CEOs/CTOs think, SRE is one of the least invested skills because it is so difficult to prove that they are worthwhile. Similarly they are invested into AFTER a major incident.
Depends who the 'we' is. It worked out great for the airports; increased drink sales means increased rent for airport shops.
No hijacked planes, no terror attacks?
There's also been none since I washed my hair this morning - certainly must be related!!
Clever
Not really….
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’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).
It's not "less terrorism".
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.
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…
> 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.
There is something I never understood: what if multiple people carry the limit of "explosive/flammable" liquid allowed and combine it inside the plane?
Not because of a sudden outbreak of sanity, but because they have CT scanners now.
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.
It's not 3 bottles, it's 3.4 oz or 100 ml.
isn't it whatever fits in a quart-sized ziploc? i presume that's where the other poster estimated "only 3 bottles."
3-1-1 is an awful mnemonic, but it's basically: 3.4 oz containers in 1 1-quart ziplock bag.
It’s as many bottles sized 100ml or less that you can fit in a 1 liter bag.
Yeah, but arent you allowed to exit and re-enter security as many times as you like as long as you have a valid ticket?
Then you hide them somewhere inside and go back out and in again
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)
They’re multi wavelength CT. Basically whenever you see a 4:3 box with a “smiths” logo over the belt it’s going to be a pretty painless process (take nothing out except analog film)
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?
I would say just as if not more important are probably some advanced nitrates detector.
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?
It can detect not only large containers of liquids, but (up to a point) what liquid is in them.
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.
Berlin had a mix of modern scanners and old scanners last time I flew. I had one flight where they were using the modern scanners. And then a few weeks later I used a different security gate and I still had to remove everything from the bag. If you fly from there, the security at the far end of the terminal has the new machines and is usually also the fastest because people generally use the first security gate they see. Good tip if you are in a hurry. The last few times I was through in a few minutes.
At some airports, you can now check your own bag using a machine that weighs it and prints a sticker. Then you drop it on a belt yourself and you walk through security scanners; all without having to talk to anyone. And finally you board using your phone. Lots of automated checks. I've boarded a few times now without anyone bothering to look at an id now. It seems that with self check in the id check at the gate disappeared. And inside the Schengen zone, nobody checks ids at security either.
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?
Not just the presence but the material itself: https://www.smithsdetection.com/products/sdx-10060-xdi/
It’s X-ray diffraction
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.
So they'll still make me toss out my dang sunscreen.
No, they'd make you take it out if the scanner / person is unable to classify the object.
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?).
This might make sense if there weren't shops selling large bottles right after security. Ones full of highly flammable liquids, even.
Or if you couldnt simply take a large empty bottle through.
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.
Like what? Alcohol isn't flammable unless it's over 63%, and you aren't allowed to bring duty free alcohol on the plane.
Duty-free purchases are all hand carried into the aircraft, and "tamper-proof" bags are nothing of the sort.
Tamper evident, a very different thing.
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.
>particularly on large containers
It's common for people to carry large metal equipment cases (for cameras, etc.) onboard
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.
So far, this machine has been used to reliably, 10/10 times, reject and discard my nivea deodorant.
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.
How is this news? A lot of airports in Europe had had this for years and even in England there were terminals within the major hubs where this was already the norm
Heathrow is by far the largest airport in the UK, with several times more flights per day than any other, and flights to a broader range of destinations. So it affects a lot more prospective fliers. I looked up European airports and found some mention that Rome and Milan also have this new equipment, but they're both still significantly smaller than Heathrow.
Gatwick already had it too, at least a part of it.
The fact Heathrow got 30/40% more traffic than other airports in the same continent already having it doesn’t make the news worth all this noise.
Yes but Heathrow has around twice as many departures per day (edit after your edit:) than Gatwick.
This is on BBC news. Heathrow is twice as busy as any other airport in the UK. It's the easiest major airport to reach from London (other than LCY which is not that "major"). I literally know people who are leaving from Heathrow this week and are affected by this. C'mon, it's newsworthy.
Yeah and 50% more than Rome, but overall less than all airports already doing it in Europe. This news made front page out of two things:
1) English people do not know anything about continental Europe
2) Americans do not know anything about Europe
Oh okay, you're asking why is it on HN front page rather than more generally why is it newsworthy. That's a fair point. I suppose it's a big feat of logistics and engineering to manage a switchover at such a large airport with so many terminals
We transited through LHR yesterday. Still had to go through security - not sure why since we stayed on the air side.
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.
Flying with connections mostly within Schengen, or EU<>US via CDG, I never had to clear security again at layover, but I recently learnt this is rather an exception, and apparently it's a very common thing in most airports to have to clear security again.
LHR is actually notorious for this; you don't have to clear security again at LHR only when the connection is domestic.
In many other airports it's the same when e.g. you switch a terminal. Best to check for a particular airport what are the rules before booking.
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.
It's super frustrating losing the contents of your water bottle and then having nowhere at all that you can refill it.
I think all UK airports have easy to find water bottle refill stations
The ones at LHR suck though. Often broken/next to no water pressure. Easier to just ask a coffee shop.
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.
I remember the days in the 90's when me and my wife could both carry back 5l containers of the local red wine in our carry on. I hope that comes back...
The free wine on the planes has gotten better since then. ;p
Still not allowed to bring in food, but now allowed to bring in unlimited soup? Ridiculous
Where were you prohibited from bringing in food?
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.
[1] https://danemcfarlane.com/how-steve-jobs-turned-boot-time-in...
> 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.
Most of the other spending serves a useful purpose. TSA doesn't. Though they seem relatively benign next to the Gesta..I mean ICE
As I said, it's fine if you want a political opinion on government spending priorities, but that's not what jmward01 appeared to be suggesting.
I think it was, his phrasing was just somewhat ambiguous
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.
I think an MRI probably takes longer than the TSA scan so walk-through MRIs wouldn’t be practical.
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.
There are an order of magnitude less MRI scans daily than US flight passengers, however, at 1/30th the frequency.
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.
I’m sure we do have a lot more MRI machines than airport scanners, right?
> 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.
BS. Full body scans are amazing, and should be added to the normal health screening along with blood tests.
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.
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.
> a few pennies (sorry, those don't exist now, how about for a few nickles?)
Wait what? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penny_(United_States_coin)
From your link:
> In late 2025, the Mint halted the production of pennies for circulation, largely due to cost.
Ah damn, that was buried. They ought to change the rest to past tense then.
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.
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.
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.
Yeah, even small airports like Belfast City have had it for the past couple of years. Other London area airports (Luton, City, and Gatwick - not sure about Stansted) have had it for about as long, too.
Heathrow's definitely a straggler - I'm assuming it was a more difficult project for them due to their sheer size.
Wonder what effect it's gonna have on duty free economy. I'm sure selling beverages is the big chunk of airport's revenue.
Doesn’t duty free shopping typically happen after one goes through security?
If you confiscate my Diet Coke at security, you have created demand for Diet Coke on the other side of security.
> For airport operations teams, the real benefit isn’t just traveler satisfaction. It’s throughput stability:
> - 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".
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".
How did they force you to do that?
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.
I doubt very much immigration told you to drink a water. Hell lost of the time you don’t even talk to them as they’re e-gates and it’s remote.
Security might have done, this is nothing to do with the border farce.
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.
Horrible airport, avoid at all costs.
> Heathrow has well publicised cases (and is not unusual in this)
Share with us your best source for this.
Why did you allow them to humiliate you like this?
Because flights are expensive enough that for most ordinary people missing one would set them back years or decades financially?
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"...
> 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.
too hyperbolic to take seriously
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
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.
Okay but for personal toiletry stuff you need the rule scrapped at both ends of your trip.
Don't be sad. One step at a time. One more trip-end to connect to other trip-ends. Or do you want to wait with roll-out until the whole world is ready to do it at the same time? Always look on the bright side of life. :)
My deodorant isn't available in those small travel containers :(
And it's the only thing i really care about, I can do with any random toothpaste and shaving foam that i buy on arrival.
But maybe it will happen in my lifetime.
Ok, that's a bummer.
Here's a silly idea that is probably not new to you, but just in case: have you looked into refillable deodorant dispensers?
> 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 don't even know what I need to show at at the start of the line. My ID? My boarding pass? Both?
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.
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”
This was my experience too - they're visibly angry at you for following the rules
Flying through JFK once, security lines had different rules: Line one, laptop in, shoes out. Line two, laptop out, shoes stayed. Line 3, nothing out. It was hilarious, because TSA agents would talk over each other, confusing the hell out of everyone.
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.
> An arbitrary limit like 100ml is pointless
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_pl...
How about an undetermined adversary? Security is all about raising the cost of an attack, not about preventing one altogether
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.
TSA (at ohare) has a repeating thing that says 100ml or 3.2oz over the loudspeaker (never mind they are different amounts)
UK uses the metric system. Why would anyone expect UK to follow the imperial system in $CURRENT_YEAR?
I was referring to the fact that the TSA, the American government agency, also uses 100ml
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).
From the beginning it was a scam to force people to buy 10 times overpriced water. Kudos to Brits that they do away with this absurdity.
Heathrow is still a bullshit airport:
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.
Presumably, these CT scanners involve fairly energetic photons, and if they're above 100 keV, then that's bit-flipping error territory.
Key and peele
Good. This should happen on all airports now. Otherwise it's useless. You won't be flying from Heathrow to Heathrow.
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).
It’s slowly happening at least in Europe: https://www.skycop.com/news/passenger-rights/airports-liquid...
You know they don't take your liquids at the destination airport, right?
People generally have a return flight.
25 years to do this.
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 am sure Al-Qaeda will be thrilled about this.
Well you wouldn't want a thirsty terrorist, would you?
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.
What exactly was stoppnig you buying a 2L bottle of vodka in a glass bottle a duty free after security and having this 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.)
Recently flew through china where they asked 3 times if if i had a portable charger and made everyone sign declarations to that effect.
Declarations are meaningless. This will not prevent fires ot occur.
Are battery fires on planes a common problem? I haven't heard of many, at least with any significant consequences.
And what would you suggest be done to reduce the risk? Asking passengers to travel without phones or laptops isn't realistic.
there was a viral video of one recently. i think thats what sparked the measures. the declaration is probably so if they find one in your luggage they can ban you from flying
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?
> Skyphone installation by the airlines led to "flight mode" because the horror of not paying is far more important than safety.
By the time “airplane mode” became common on mobile phones, the phones installed in airplane seats were already decommissioned in most cases.
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.
if you are really serious about this, you can hide a pocket a fluid inside your body, and nobody would know...
south Korean airlines are banning battery use in flight now https://www.timeout.com/asia/news/psa-major-south-korean-air...
other asian carriers will say they can't be in overhead compartments
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.
When gate-checking carryon bags, staff told passengers to take batteries out of the carryons.
It seems like something that is high risk during flight shouldn't be left to passenger compliance with spoken instructions.
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.
FINALLY
(PS. Still not going to fly there)
This rule wasn't enforced anyway...
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.
Enforcement is very inconsistent that’s for sure. The system is as secure as the least secure airport.
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 can still do that if you check a bag instead of carrying it on, of course.
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 comments here insinuating that airplane terrorism is a non-issue would make for a good chapter in Carl Sagan's Demon-Haunted World.
Yes, after 9/11 airports did introduce 'security theater' methods. That is a fair.
No, worrying about airplane terrorism is not pearl-clutching. The most likely explanation for its decline is that the changes the establishment made were effective.
The establishment successfully dealt with the difficult problem of airplane terrorism, thereby leaving the public free to take it for granted and complain about the establishment.
Are we to worry about train terrorism also? Shop terrorism? A person might bring a bomb to any crowded space, it simply is not practical to check all of them.
It's difficult to take down a skyscraper with a train.
Yes, 'shop terrorism' can be a problem (see: the UK during the Troubles).
I do agree with the implication that society must tolerate a certain amount of terrorism to avoid turning into a police state. That does not mean that airplane terrorism, without strict security, is so rare that we can ignore it.