Travellers faced with drawn out and often degrading security checks at Britain’s airports are beginning to question the effectiveness of the measures in place. As part of Telegraph Travel's Fair Deal for Travellers campaign, Nigel Richardson outlines some demands for some common sense
A touch-screen facility has been installed in terminals at Heathrow airport,
just at the point where departing passengers emerge airside from the
security checks. “How was your security experience today?” asks a sign
(implying a transatlantic inflection that is guaranteed to fray nerves even
further). Below the sign are four buttons with which to register your
response, ranging from green with a smiley face to red with a glum one.
You might as well ask someone to rate an enema. Airport security procedures
are tedious, stressful and often demeaning (six years ago, a research
scientist measuring the physiological stress levels of passengers at
Heathrow claimed they were on a par with those experienced by fighter pilots
and riot police).
The question is, do they do any good? Emily Maitlis, the Newsnight presenter,
is doubtful. In a recent newspaper article she described her frustration at
being carted off and questioned by Special Branch after “explosive traces” –
probably hand cream – had been found on the handle of her carry-on luggage.
The point of screening procedures at airports is being called into question
not only by experienced and sceptical travellers such as Maitlis. The
security experts are pitching in too. “I’m not sure airport security has
ever stopped anybody from doing anything, anywhere,” is a statement all the
more startling for coming from the lips of Chris Yates, the former aviation
security editor at the specialist publisher IHS Jane’s (which produces,
inter alia, Jane’s Defence Weekly), and now a respected consultant on
international security issues.
“[Aviation] is a sexy, glamorous industry,” Yates told me. “At the end of the day, if a terrorist wants to make a statement, targeting an aircraft is one of the ways to guarantee global attention immediately.”
No one would seriously challenge such a statement. Yet some of the methods deployed to combat this threat, and the excessively literal way in which rules are interpreted by some security staff, are coming under increasing scrutiny – not least by readers of this newspaper, judging from the views on security screening at airports we solicited through the Telegraph Travel website (for some egregious examples of overzealous screening, see “It’s security, stupid”, below).
This wasn’t a scientific survey. A spokesman for the Department for Transport, which issues security regulations for airports in Britain, told me that “the overwhelming majority of passengers say they are happy with security checks at airports” and that the measures in place “are a proportionate response to threat levels”. But we believe our findings reflect widespread dissatisfaction among airline passengers, and show that pressure is building for radical changes.
“The whole issue of airport security is nothing but theatre; to be seen to be doing something,” wrote one reader, while another reckoned “airport security in the UK is a joke. I went through Heathrow not long ago and it was like some kind of village fair with huge crowds and half a dozen staff shouting out instructions.”
The security procedures at our premier airport, through which 70 million passengers passed in 2012, attract a “could do much better” verdict from the public, not just here but across the world. In the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2013 – based on more than 12 million questionnaires completed by passengers in nearly 400 airports worldwide – LHR came top for shopping, but only 18th (out of more than 200) in the “Best Airport Security Processing” category (Copenhagen was top, cited for its short waiting times and the courtesy, efficiency and language skills of its staff).
On the plus side, at least Heathrow doesn’t charge passengers for the privilege of having their cabin baggage and their person scanned. Bristol airport charges £5 for use of a “dedicated priority security channel”, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool levy £3 for a similar service and passengers prepared to pay £3 at Luton can jump to the front of the security queue. Nor does the lucrative side of security end there; 11 airports in Britain sell plastic bags in which to display liquids, gels and aerosols, charging anything from 50p for two bags to £1 for four.
All could take a leaf out of Gatwick’s book. Not only are its bags free of charge, but it recently introduced family assistance lanes that are attracting plaudits. London City airport, likewise, is receiving good reviews for the speed at which it processes both departing and arriving passengers. And at Dallas/Fort Worth international airport, they have gone down the chill-out room route and installed “mood lighting” at one checkpoint – paid for by a local hotel group and an advertising agency, in the hope of putting passengers in a better frame of mind for airside shopping.
Such beacons of good practice do exist, but the current system is simply “not sustainable as traffic continues to grow”, according to a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade body serving the airline industry. Not only are security costs rising sharply – now nearly £5 billion a year globally, borne by airlines, airports and passengers – but pressure is building in the terminals. Before 9/11 the average security checkpoint processed 350 passengers per hour; today the figure is less than 150 and falling.
No one is feeling the squeeze more than the elderly. Surely an 80-year-old woman with hearing difficulties, bent double with osteoporosis, poses no threat and should be waved through? Yet there is no flexibility in the system that would allow this (again, see “It’s security, stupid”). The complaint that the screening process is “humiliating and degrading” is common among all age groups, while one reader questioned the whole premise: “I have long felt that delays caused by going through airport security are an artificial creation to make us feel more under threat than we actually are.”
“[Aviation] is a sexy, glamorous industry,” Yates told me. “At the end of the day, if a terrorist wants to make a statement, targeting an aircraft is one of the ways to guarantee global attention immediately.”
No one would seriously challenge such a statement. Yet some of the methods deployed to combat this threat, and the excessively literal way in which rules are interpreted by some security staff, are coming under increasing scrutiny – not least by readers of this newspaper, judging from the views on security screening at airports we solicited through the Telegraph Travel website (for some egregious examples of overzealous screening, see “It’s security, stupid”, below).
This wasn’t a scientific survey. A spokesman for the Department for Transport, which issues security regulations for airports in Britain, told me that “the overwhelming majority of passengers say they are happy with security checks at airports” and that the measures in place “are a proportionate response to threat levels”. But we believe our findings reflect widespread dissatisfaction among airline passengers, and show that pressure is building for radical changes.
“The whole issue of airport security is nothing but theatre; to be seen to be doing something,” wrote one reader, while another reckoned “airport security in the UK is a joke. I went through Heathrow not long ago and it was like some kind of village fair with huge crowds and half a dozen staff shouting out instructions.”
The security procedures at our premier airport, through which 70 million passengers passed in 2012, attract a “could do much better” verdict from the public, not just here but across the world. In the Skytrax World Airport Awards 2013 – based on more than 12 million questionnaires completed by passengers in nearly 400 airports worldwide – LHR came top for shopping, but only 18th (out of more than 200) in the “Best Airport Security Processing” category (Copenhagen was top, cited for its short waiting times and the courtesy, efficiency and language skills of its staff).
On the plus side, at least Heathrow doesn’t charge passengers for the privilege of having their cabin baggage and their person scanned. Bristol airport charges £5 for use of a “dedicated priority security channel”, Leeds Bradford and Liverpool levy £3 for a similar service and passengers prepared to pay £3 at Luton can jump to the front of the security queue. Nor does the lucrative side of security end there; 11 airports in Britain sell plastic bags in which to display liquids, gels and aerosols, charging anything from 50p for two bags to £1 for four.
All could take a leaf out of Gatwick’s book. Not only are its bags free of charge, but it recently introduced family assistance lanes that are attracting plaudits. London City airport, likewise, is receiving good reviews for the speed at which it processes both departing and arriving passengers. And at Dallas/Fort Worth international airport, they have gone down the chill-out room route and installed “mood lighting” at one checkpoint – paid for by a local hotel group and an advertising agency, in the hope of putting passengers in a better frame of mind for airside shopping.
Such beacons of good practice do exist, but the current system is simply “not sustainable as traffic continues to grow”, according to a spokesman for the International Air Transport Association (IATA), the trade body serving the airline industry. Not only are security costs rising sharply – now nearly £5 billion a year globally, borne by airlines, airports and passengers – but pressure is building in the terminals. Before 9/11 the average security checkpoint processed 350 passengers per hour; today the figure is less than 150 and falling.
No one is feeling the squeeze more than the elderly. Surely an 80-year-old woman with hearing difficulties, bent double with osteoporosis, poses no threat and should be waved through? Yet there is no flexibility in the system that would allow this (again, see “It’s security, stupid”). The complaint that the screening process is “humiliating and degrading” is common among all age groups, while one reader questioned the whole premise: “I have long felt that delays caused by going through airport security are an artificial creation to make us feel more under threat than we actually are.”
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