Last night I got back from my flying visit to the United States, and my first experience of the latest level of security measures.

Ever since the US decided to introduce a security system that allowed their staff to search checked baggage meaning that the baggage has to be left unlocked I’ve not been keen on putting any checked baggage through – quite apart from the baggage security issues (see here, here, here, here and here for examples) the checks will sometimes result in the baggage not actually making it onto an onward flight. As a result I did this trip entirely with hand baggage – having said that it did mean that I came under the new liquid rules.

What is interesting is the rules are not consistent, so for example on my trip over my hand baggage was searched twice, once in the UK, and again when I had cleared customs at Washington and was changing over to a domestic flight. Heathrow was relatively straightforward in that aside from having to take out the plastic bag containing any liquids (all in containers under 100ml) security was much the same as usual. At Washington they additionally required the liquids to go through the x-ray totally separately, and that everybody take off their shoes. (It is worth mentioning that a man sat next to me on the plane back said that when he had gone out through Heathrow everybody had been putting through their shoes.) Hand baggage was strictly limited to one item only. Coming back was different, my hand baggage was checked once at Altanta, and not at all at Washington. People were allowed to carry on one piece of hand baggage plus a ‘personal item’ which could be a briefcase. The sharp objects rules were also apparently not as tight going back, as there were a couple of people on our plane knitting for most of the flight.

There are also a selection of other new rules that I hadn’t come across before, for example passengers are not allowed to congregate around the toilets. The other new one is that the TSA in the US has decreed that passengers should remain in their own cabin during the flight – and that includes the toilets. On the 767 I flew on this produces an odd situation where the block of toilets halfway down the plane is allocated to the business cabin, so the economy passengers sat right next to them have to walk all the way to the toilets at the back. Indeed a pensioner on our flight back, who was sat at the front of the economy cabin and a person travelling with him had a quite heated debate with the cabin staff over why he couldn’t go into the toilet. Quite what the purpose of the rule is I don’t know – I can’t think that someone serious about hijacking a plane is seriously going to be stopped by not being allowed to go into another cabin.

Having said that, the impression I get is that the security measures are there as much to try and reassure passengers over security, rather than actually make flying any more secure in reality. This was actually a discussion I had with a US based colleague, who was bemoaning the fact that people of the future will have an airport system very different from the one he grew up with, and than in reality it probably wouldn’t be that much safer anyway. If you have a read of this Register article which I’ve previously mentioned the liquid threat has more to do with Hollywood than reality – something that is largely true for a number of the previous threats – but somebody serious even within the current rules is still able to bring enough on a flight to destroy it if they wanted. However when you look at the description you realise that to ban the items they would need would be too much of a disruption.

By the end of that article I’d pretty well come to the conclusion that the only real way to be safe as a passengers in the air is not to fly on a commercial jet at all. Of course for most people whilst train is a possibility in Europe, or driving, flying is still safer than the car, and nothing beats it for speed. For going to North America there is really no alternative, so I suspect for the foreseeable future we’ll have a regular cycle of security threat, followed by massive tightening of security, and people will put up with it. Of course for those who can afford it, the private jet industry is probably rubbing their hands with glee…