Government brings back 100ml liquids rule at airports with new security scanners

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.

• Dave B says:

  8 Jun8 June 02:39

  What a farce this is

• Carlos says:

  8 Jun8 June 05:26

  Unless we see other CT scanner equipped European airports reintroduce the 100ml rule, then I’m going to take the reliability claim with a pinch of salt. I long suspected the rules would be brought back at the behest of the Boots CEO as their airport sales would fall off cliff with passengers no longer buying overpriced mini cosmetics. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but let’s see how this plays out over the coming months.

  • Xmenlongshot says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:18

    Yes – Boots UK’s CEO definitely sets security policy, that’s plausible

  • BA Flyer IHG Stayer says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:06

    You clearly are a conspiracy theorist!

  • HampshireHog says:

    8 Jun8 June 09:16

    Have Boots made a donation to a political party in the election?

  • Novice says:

    8 Jun8 June 10:37

    You can get all mini versions in supermarkets now so no need to get anything in boots.

• BJ says:

  8 Jun8 June 05:29

  Anybody know anything about new scanners at EDI, were they not supposedly on schedule to be up and running this month?

  • Andrew. says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:04

    The “Fast Track” scanner has had the new scanners for a while now.

    You’ve had the “Saughton/Sighthill snarlers” competing with one another as they shout “Leave your fluids in the bag” with “take your fluids out your bag”.

  • CJD says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:36

    They’re up and running, I went through the lane with new scanners on my flight to Madrid last month, which was just as well because I’d forgotten about a bottle of shampoo and shower gel in a side pocket of my backpack.

  • Stankpa says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:44

    Only Fast Track has new scanners installed. Unfortunately, if the security is busy, you can get directed to a normal line (albeit skipping the queue). This happened to me a few times recently

    • Chris says:

      8 Jun8 June 15:48

      Don’t know if it’s a weekend thing, or unlucky today. But the new scanners weren’t operating this afternoon. Fast track just filtered into the old scanners

• Lou says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:06

  For me the win was not having to take stuff out of your bag, and that still remains, so still winning

  • Charlie says:

    8 Jun8 June 07:40

    Exactly. Newcastle to anywhere from T3 at Heathrow is so much faster now. Newcastle fast track was always quick anyway, but it’s super fast now. It is the T3 connections bit that is great (plus first wing on return). Having said that, although NCL and first wing have plenty of staff, T3 connections does not and there was a very long queue for secondary’s.

  • Novice says:

    8 Jun8 June 10:43

    Agree. I am not bothered about the size. My biggest issue is usually because of ocd I have a few mini hand sanitizer bottles in and depending on how long I will be using them; sometimes I take about 4/5 so it adds up quickly when they are looking at all my liquids but if I keep it in my bags it would be better.

• roberto says:

  8 Jun8 June 06:49

  Too many second screening effecting queuing?

  • TGLoyalty says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:47

    From what I’ve heard 100% it might not the the scanners but the operators but they don’t have something right

    Interestingly BHX had all the new scanners in place at the end of May but decided not to relax the 100ml rule yet so I’m guessing they saw the same issue.

    Seems LCY had it right though so it’s not the scanners themselves.

    • Tariq says:

      8 Jun8 June 11:56

      My perception would be operator inexperience.

      At ABZ this week, seemed like all large bottles were being pulled and put in an individual analyser machine.

  • Travel Strong says:

    8 Jun8 June 09:00

    Seems odd that the government would have any interest in legislating because of queue times. They certainly don’t care much when egates fail!

• Andrew J says:

  8 Jun8 June 07:03

  When travelling through the First Wing recently with a bottle of water, it had to be removed and put into a separate scanner – so I decided then that I wouldn’t be carrying liquids over 100ml, as it created more hassle. But not having to faff about with plastic bags of liquids etc is still an improvement on the last 10 years, and something I always appreciated when travelling on Eurostar.

  • Novice says:

    8 Jun8 June 10:55

    In MAN, ages ago I remember I had bought a water bottle with the intention of drinking it later and at security I was told I could either drink it all then or they would throw it away. So I was stood drinking water while they were checking my luggage.

• PeteM says:

  8 Jun8 June 07:29

  LHR T3 Fast Track had also removed the liquid ban some months back.

  • MW says:

    8 Jun8 June 10:09

    It had but if you have a bigger bottle, the wait for the secondary test was not worth it (at least for water) when I travelled from there in April.

    • PeteM says:

      8 Jun8 June 12:47

      It is worth it for expensive booze 🙂

• Derek says:

  8 Jun8 June 07:53

  Having worked in Security Hall at EDI a few years ago, and been a screener who would be hidden in a room for 20 mins at a time, I can tell you it’s not easy. You had 3 monitors with each having a different view and image of each bag (2 in colour x-ray) and you could adjust the gamma to help identify items and had 15 seconds to spot anything you weren’t happy with (commonly liquids). If you spotted, say a pair of small scissors, you had to judge if they were larger than the allowed size, select them and reject the bag. If you didn’t make a decision to clear the bag in the time allowed it was automatically a rejected bag for checks.

  If you spotted a genuine threat, such a knife, or potential explosive material, you had to reject as high threat and those were the bags that automatically reversed into the Perspex box you might have spotted before, and couldn’t be touched until you immediately discussed with the line manager and they spoke to the passenger without revealing specifically what the concern was.

  It’s so intense for concentration that you had to rotate the roles of the line you were assigned every 20 mins (loading, searching, detector, scanner, etc).

  I never under-appreciate their responsibility no matter what part of the security process they are at, as it will be their turn from the screening at some point soon. Most passengers were lovely but every day you always had one or two that felt you were there to spoil their fun and huff, puff.& moan when you had to search their bag coz they’d left a 1L bottle of water in it. (Don’t get me started on hen and stag groups)

  *testing is continuous as the system randomly would superimpose a random potential threat item into a bag image for you to find.. and assuming you correctly select it, it wouldn’t cause then bag to be rejected for search as it knew it was a test item.

  I know everyone here will appreciate it. The new scanners may make it easier for the screener to review and decide on each bag, but it just takes one missed item…..so please don’t give the front line a hard time.. the job is tough enough.

  • PeteM says:

    8 Jun8 June 08:56

    Interesting insights, thanks!

    • Stu_N says:

      8 Jun8 June 09:03

      +1, thanks for taking time to post this

  • Metty says:

    8 Jun8 June 09:12

    and another +1. My rammed full (but small) wheely was rejected at Gatwick twice recently, for one of the rejections the guy did say ‘if you’ve got a rammed bag it’s tricky to pass scanning as the scanner operative only has 15 secs to approve’ which is as per your post. Since then, I’ve just checked my bag. Avoids overhead bin anxiety!

  • Peter K says:

    8 Jun8 June 09:14

    I personally don’t give the staff a hard time. I always think they are ultimately there for my benefit and dealing with the public is not an easy job! You’re added insight is also very interesting.

    However, I just wish that some of the staff wouldn’t act like tools themselves. They make it harder for the public…and ultimately for their fellow colleagues as it creates a bad atmosphere in an already stressful situation for many travellers.

    • Peter K says:

      8 Jun8 June 09:16

      *Your added

  • Novice says:

    8 Jun8 June 11:09

    I have always appreciated and I honestly don’t care if they take their time to check everything. My usual frustration with MAN security is that they are rude and the way they treat people is not acceptable. It is fine to conduct a job in a professional manner but they seem to have missed that training.

    • Doommonger says:

      8 Jun8 June 12:24

      Wipe your eyes, and run off a strongly worded letter to your local MP.

  • Bagoly says:

    8 Jun8 June 13:23

    Did the training include any discussion of the idea of critical path, i.e. the element which makes the overall path slowest is the one which should be the focus?
    Nearly always the scanner-viewing, although currently sometimes the secondary?
    Once that is understood, various things follow – E.g. that the transition of people monitoring the scanner should be as quick as possible, with any disruptive effect of breaks done while on other rotations.
    And if there are any gaps in items going into the scanner, address whatever is causing that further upstream.

    Similarly, some airports understand that one can call through people of either gender until one has a queue of each, rather than a queue of one gender stopping any progress of the other.

    I expect that the vast majority of the staff doing the job would like to cause as little disruption as possible, but in various airports it very much looks that they have not been given the understanding of what to focus on to achieve that as well as maintaining security.

    • cin4 says:

      11 Jun11 June 01:27

      Hear, hear.

This article is closed to new comments. Feel free to ask your question in the HfP forums.