Airport Security

For this wonderful trip to Prague I had the pleasure of flying out of Gatwick airport - home to a hilarious web of bureaucracy and security. I'm sure no-one wants to hear me complain about all of that fun (and to be honest, if you can read English and have common sense, it's not that much of a hassle), but here's a couple of amusing observations/anecdotes:

1. The 100ml rule
The 100ml rule states that no liquids may be taken on a plane unless they're inside a sealed container with a capacity of not more than 100mls. This container must then be inside a sealed, transparent bag, which must have a maximum volume of 1 litre.

Now then, I'm firstly quite bemused by this. Why restrict me to 100ml bottles if I can happily take a full litre of explosive substance onto the plane, presuming I bother to go and get 10 separate containers.

Secondly, given that I can take on pretty much any solid I want, including one which could say, melt at room temperature during the hour I'm waiting for the plane after I'm past security, why are they being so fanatic about liquids?


_{For the chavs amongst you, that's the same as 4 shots of White Lightning}

Thirdly, what happens to all of the confiscated liquid? Well, I can tell you that from what I saw, two things happen.

At the point of confiscation, it's thrown into a large dustbin-type container. Yes, you heard, hundreds of litres of almost certainly explosive liquids are thrown together, with little tenderness, into a bin surrounded by potential passengers and customs officials.

After this, the materials are then 'disposed of' (from what I hear, crushed - applying high pressure to explosives is always a great idea), except the ones that are used around the airport to demonstrate the dangers of not following the 100ml rule. Yup, they put loads of potentially explosive substances in nice glass stands all around strategic points at the airport. Nice.

Finally, this amused me:
Vatican Air passengers have Holy Water confiscated

2. Shoes
It was great fun watching female passengers with fancy high-heels having to strip them off for the 'shoes' part of security. This policy was recently introduced after someone, somewhere, had something bad in his shoes and didn't get caught. Makes it pretty tempting to try getting a bomb through in a bra doesn't it lads?


_{Even airport-friendly shoes need to be taken off. What the hell makes them airport friendly by the way?}

I heard a great story about how this bit was handled in one airport a colleague travelled through - where the shoes were taken by a security official and banged hard against a table to check for explosives. Brilliant.

3. Metal detectors
Over at Gatwick I went through a full-body metal detector, which I'm sure you'd expect. As quite often happens, I made the thing beep, so someone came along with a hand-held thingy and pushed it around me. Once we'd decided that it was probably the buttons on my jeans causing the beep, I was let through.

It wasn't until I got off the plane at the other end that I noticed I'd kept my wallet in my pocket, complete with penknife I'd forgotten to take out. Lucky I'm such an easygoing guy with no particular dislike for any countries eh?

More later, off to get food that won't poison this weekend's visitor now :)
Xx