Is airport security tight enough?

Just had a holiday to Egypt, flew all the way there completely unhindered on an out of date passport, it got noticed on my way home!

Passport control != airport security.

What should have happened is you flew then the Egyptians sent you home then the UK border people tell you off a bit before telling you to bugger off home.

Pretty sure the only time you need to show a passport these days is to prove you’re the named person on the ticket and then at the other end when you’re entering a country.

Dunno, there seemed to be a lot of scanning going on at passport control going out, the Egyptian bloke did even take a triple look at me & the passport when going in… Maybe he just let it slide.

Never seen a plane brought down by an expired passport before – so I’m going to say yes.

Never seen a plane brought down by an expired passport before

Exactly. The fact that your passport had expired didn’t change the fact that you are you and you are still who your passport says you are…

But you’re Tinsy. Everybody knows Tinsy – your face is your passport!

I never thought of it like that… Still doesnt seem to get me the same amount of BJ’s as I expect! 🙂

You can travel through the eurozone on an out of date passport, not recommended but it is possible, went to the canaries last nov didn’t realise until we can’t back through Birmingham our passports expired a year ago, was told no issue just get them sorted.

I’ve been skiing with a guy who used his brothers passport.
He was a tall, muscular chap, his brother was a short, very fat man. A bit like twins, and yet no questions asked.

I of course, as usual, got searched in both directions.

If a problem had arisen in Egypt you could have just given the immigration bloke ten dollars to overlook it.

is being ‘searched in both directions’ painful 😉

The taking liquids thing off passengers is a joke and I’m fairly sure more about selling drinks while BAA holds you captive in the shopping area than airline safety.

Strangley, the large glass bottles of flammable liquid available in duty free are absolutely fine to take on board.

😉

Spot on. It’s all about making sure you take maximum advantage of the “retail opportunities” so that the airport owners can maximise the yield from all that unused space.

what I don’t get is the seemingly randomly applied take off your shoes/ don’t take off your shoes policy.

Egypt is one of the countries that require you to have 6 months left on your passport and your airline would have been liable for your repatriation if they had allowed you to board. There was a piece about this on BBC Watchdog the other night. The passenger was refused at check in and not refunded his air fare.
Sounds like you were very lucky.

[/quote]The taking liquids thing off passengers is a joke and I’m fairly sure more about selling drinks while BAA holds you captive in the shopping area than airline safety.

Its more about stopping this mate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot.

One of the original “tests” was inside a drinks bottle and final assembly done in the toilet of flight.

A quirk in the seat numbering on that particular flight meant it wasnt left over the main fuel tank and the plane didnt explode into a fireball as planned. Did some major damage to the plane tho.

This came up again in the UK a few years back when the liquid ban came in and that little plot was disrupted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot.

The 7/7 bombers were associated to that group and we all know what the “backup plan” did on the London tube.

Airport security cant be tight enough in my opinion. Sadly these nutters will pull this off one day.

Strangley, the large glass bottles of flammable liquid available in duty free are absolutely fine to take on board.

Before the liquid ban (but after 9/11) I was flying from the US back to the UK and had been given a really nice bottle of whiskey. We’d had a nip or two the night before and I had the bottle in my hand luggage. In the departure lounge I got a bottle of something else to take home as well and went to get on the plane. Cue entry of boarding agent with a lack of grey matter.

She insisted my opened bottle was a security risk as I might use it to start a fire or smash it and use it as a weapon. I asked her if that applied to my other bottle (and those of other passengers) and she said no. What followed was one of the most peculiar conversations I’ve had with a jobsworth where she ended up sauing point blank said it was not possible to do the same with the bottle I bought at the airport as it was still closed. I said I could open it there and then and she said she’d have to confiscate it but I could open it on the plane if I wanted.

Mind well and truly boggled with her idiocy.

Its reassuring theatrical security spread over three areas to make you hang around different shopping malls.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Security_theater

The taking liquids thing off passengers is a joke and I’m fairly sure more about selling drinks while BAA holds you captive in the shopping area than airline safety.

Its more about stopping this mate http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bojinka_plot.

One of the original “tests” was inside a drinks bottle and final assembly done in the toilet of flight.

A quirk in the seat numbering on that particular flight meant it wasnt left over the main fuel tank and the plane didnt explode into a fireball as planned. Did some major damage to the plane tho.

This came up again in the UK a few years back when the liquid ban came in and that little plot was disrupted http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_transatlantic_aircraft_plot.

The 7/7 bombers were associated to that group and we all know what the “backup plan” did on the London tube.

Airport security cant be tight enough in my opinion. Sadly these nutters will pull this off one day.

Flamable liquids aren’t an issue – aircraft interiors are flame retardant to such a startling degree you’d think it was witchcraft. But I’ve been present at the detonation of a bottle of improvised liquid explosive. Jesus tittyfricking Christ!

Its reassuring theatrical security spread over three areas to make you hang around different shopping malls.

Protesting at minor inconvenience is no less theatrical though

Jesus tittyfricking Christ!

That’s a funny looking plane.

Its not a plane

Is that better?

Im always amazed that terrorist dont commit some action before you check in, before you go through security. The checking in hall is full of people, bags, etc.

Why risk security ?

There should be separate planes with no security for people easily irritated by security checks who don’t mind the risk of being blown up.

They could just self-destruct the plane at any sign of trouble.

Thats quite a good idea.

aircraft interiors are flame retardant to such a startling degree you’d think it was witchcraft.

I worked with someone whose job had been in the past to test things for planes to ensure they didn’t burn and if they did they were (relatively) non-toxic. He seemed to like the old day job where he got to set fire to stuff

Glad to see the circus makes some of you feel safe.

Flying Adelaide to Sydney (big city, lots of landmarks to fly a plane into and make a splash), only restrictions are the usual no sharp things etc, and laptops and aerosols must be scanned out of your carry on. Unless you check in with a person at the desk, you don’t even need ID, just your frequent flyer card, or the credit card to do the booking. Oh, and non-flying people can go to the gate to say hello, wave good bye.

Flying Adelaide to Christchurch (small city with sadly even fewer landmarks than it used to have since the quake), shoes off, no liquids, passports, 2x scans, the works.

Why is it inherently more dangerous to fly internationally? If it’s not, why the huge difference in security?

The best is flying regional into Melbourne – they xray your stuff and scan you once you’ve got there 🙄

So really, really, it has little to do with security. Just the perception of security.

according to Lt Col Wylde the plausibility of a liquid bomb is just not possible, and he is perhaps the most senior bomb expert in the UK, he claims the whole idea is a myth and one not created by any terrorist organisation.

Lieutenant-Colonel (ret.) Nigel Wylde, a former senior British Army Intelligence Officer, has suggested that the police and government story about the “terror plot” revealed on 10th August was part of a “pattern of lies and deceit.”

British and American government officials have described the operation which resulting in the arrest of 24 mostly British Muslim suspects, as a resounding success. Thirteen of the suspects have been charged, and two released without charges.

According to security sources, the terror suspects were planning to board up to ten civilian airliners and detonate highly volatile liquid explosives on the planes in a spectacular terrorist operation. The liquid explosives — either TATP (Triacetone Triperoxide), DADP (diacetone diperoxide) or the less sensitive HMTD (hexamethylene triperoxide diamine) — were reportedly to be made on board the planes by mixing sports drinks with a peroxide-based household gel and then be detonated using an MP3 player or mobile phone.

But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a “fiction.” Creating liquid explosives is a “highly dangerous and sophisticated task,” he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.

Terror plot scenario “untenable”

“The idea that these people could sit in the plane toilet and simply mix together these normal household fluids to create a high explosive capable of blowing up the entire aircraft is untenable,” said Lt. Col. Wylde, who was trained as an ammunition technical officer responsible for terrorist bomb disposal at the Royal Army Ordnance Corps in Sandhurst.

After working as a bomb defuser in Northern Ireland, Lt. Col. Wylde became a senior officer in British Army Intelligence in 1977. During the Cold War, he collected intelligence as part of an undercover East German “liaison unit,” then went on to work in the Ministry of Defense to review its communications systems.

“So who came up with the idea that a bomb could be made on board? Not Al Qaeda for sure. It would not work. Bin Laden is interested in success not deterrence by failure,” Wylde stated.

“This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed.”

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. “The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop.” The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is “very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation,” said Lt. Col. Wylde.

If there was a conspiracy, he added, “it did not involve manufacturing the explosives in the loo,” as this simply “could not have worked.” The process would be quickly and easily detected. The fumes of the chemicals in the toilet “would be smelt by anybody in the area.” They would also inevitably “cause the alarms in the toilet and in the air change system in the aircraft to be triggered. The pilot has the ability to dump all the air from an aircraft as a fire-fighting measure, leaving people to use oxygen masks. All this means the planned attack would be detected long before the queues outside the loo had grown to enormous lengths.”

Government silent on detonators

Even if it was possible for the explosive to have been made on the aircraft, a detonator, probably made from TATP, would be needed to set it off. “It is very dangerous and risky to the individual,” Wylde said. “As the quantity involved would be small this would injure the would-be suicide bomber but not endanger the aircraft, thus defeating the object of bringing down an aircraft.”

Despite the implausibility of this scenario, it has been used to justify wide-ranging new security measures that threaten to permanently curtail civil liberties and to suspend sections of the United Kingdom’s Human Rights Act of 1998. “Why were the public delicately informed of an alleged conspiracy which the authorities knew, or should have known, could not have worked?” asked Lt. Col. Wylde.

“This is not a new problem,” he added, noting that ‘shoe-bomber’ Richard Reid had attempted to use this type of explosive on a plane in December 2001. “If this threat is real, what has been done to develop explosive test kits capable of detecting peroxide based explosives?” asked Wylde. “These are the real issues about protecting the public that have not been publicised. Instead we are going to get demands for more internment without trial.”

Lt. Col. Wylde also raised questions about the criminal investigation into the 7th July terrorist attacks in London last year. He noted that police and government sources have maintained “total silence” about the detonation devices used in the bombs on the London Underground and the bus at Tavistock Square. “Whatever the nature of the primary explosive materials, even if it was home-made TATP, the detonator that must be used to trigger an explosion is an extremely dangerous device to make, requiring a high level of expertise that cannot be simply self-taught or picked-up over the internet,” Wylde stated.

The government’s silence on the detonation device used in the attacks is “disturbing,” he said, as the creation of the devices requires the involvement of trained explosives experts. Wylde speculated that such individuals would have to be present either inside the country or outside, perhaps in Eastern Europe, where they would be active participants in an international supply-chain to UK operatives. “In either case, we are talking about something far more dangerous than home-grown radicals here.”

But Lt. Col. Wylde, who was awarded the Queen’s Gallantry Medal for his command of the Belfast Explosive Ordnance Disposal Unit in 1974, described this scenario as a “fiction.” Creating liquid explosives is a “highly dangerous and sophisticated task,” he states, one that requires not only significant chemical expertise but also appropriate equipment.

The ones I saw used (which may not be the ones the Colonel is referring to) required pouring one liquid into another with a jug.

Lt Col Wylde; doesnt have an axe to grind… does he?

Maybe he does

Dunno, but he seems to know a lot about what he is talking about.
“This story has been blown out of all proportion. The liquids would need to be carefully distilled at freezing temperatures to extract the required chemicals, which are very difficult to obtain in the purities needed.”

Once the fluids have been extracted, the process of mixing them produces significant amounts of heat and vile fumes. “The resulting liquid then needs some hours at room temperature for the white crystals that are the explosive to develop.” The whole process, which can take between 12 and 36 hours, is “very dangerous, even in a lab, and can lead to premature detonation,” said Lt. Col. Wylde.

one point in all this is the detonators required

He was prosecuted for breach of the official secrets act. Some thing to do with NI I seem to remember, charges dropped tho.

not talking about that, but his comments seem to be very detailed and knowledgable, and do tie in with a number of analyses I have read on the subject, one is that no one has come forward with an explanation of what a colourless odourless liquid is that could be turned in to a bomb.

They may not be going for high explosives. All you need to do is punch a hole in the skin of the plane to cause major mayhem.

I’m sure I watched them do this on telly. It didn’t destroy the aircraft but it did make a hole.

yeah but how much of that is actually possible and how much was it the high explosive detonator causing a lot of the damage, in these tv “tests” they have used industrial detonators so they can create a blast that wouldnt happen with a home made detonator.

I am just very sceptical on this, and would be happier if the security was tightened up, but tightened up properly not just some lame excuse to get yo to buy more stuff in the airport.

If I was determined to blow myself and as many infidels as possible to pieces I wouldn’t waste my time trying to board an aircraft, I would simply stroll into a nice big shopping mall like Manchester’s Trashy Park or the Arndale, shout “Allahu Akhbar” and pull the string. I can’t understand why this hasn’t happened yet.

I think that the point Wylde makes is that the terrorists were
trying to blow up the plane, and had plausible a method for doing so, but that the official explanation was bunkum, and does not stand up to scrutiny.

And now we all pay the price for this, because of the 100ml limit on liquids.