h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It does appear that on the western side of the Atlantic, domestic airline security is still viewed by the airline companies as more of a nuisance than a necessity. And it is likely to remain so until they put people/passenger safety before profit margins.

It helps to remember that Europe was suffering terrorist attacks in airports way back in the seventies, and even then it took a while for security measures to become tight. How many more lives need to be lost in America before they take security seriously?

Maybe people in the US regard it as a nuisance because in the US, they have gone so over the top with it that it is a nuisance and a deterrent ot travelling by plane. When I flew from London Gatwick to Atlanta, I was comfortable that the security measures in Gatwick were sufficient. Of course, a very determined nutter could have gotten through somehow but for the most part, people's baggage and person were inspected enough to make me comfortable that my journey would be safe. In Atlanta, it was a nightmare, the security was so over the top and intrusive - invasive even - yet I didn't feel any safer in that airport. In fact, given the chaos that their "security" measures created, I felt a lot less safe.

It seems to me that the US has had a sort of knee jerk reaction to 9/11 and has gone over the top with security, whereas in Europe where we've had terrorism since shep was a pup, the security processes are mkore measured and balanced.

The scarey thing about the stories of American security checks is that although they were so over the top, they were not efficient. All that talk of being able to pick up any bag and take it onboard.

Can anyone tell us, do domestic USA airports not have routine X-ray inspection of hand-luggage?-, metal-detecting "gates" etc., such as we have in Europe?

Well I've only flown domestically in the US three times, Atlanta, San Francisco and Las Vegas. Each time I did go through security similar to the UK. In fairness, my experience of San Francisco was pretty similar to the European Airport experience apart from the presence of armed soldiers at the security gates.

I fly domestically in the U.S. (and will be again next week!), and the level of security varies from airport to airport, but they seem to be at about this level: They all now have devices that check your ... well, checked luggage before it even gets to their x-ray equipment. They run a cardboard device over the handles, fasteners and inside the bags, then put that device into a machine. I'm not sure what they're trying to detect with them. When you check in, you have to show photo id to get your boarding pass. Then you go to security, where they check your id to your boarding pass before you go through a metal detector and your carry on luggage goes through the x-ray machine there. If you beep, they wave the wand over you. If you wear certain kinds of shoes, you have to remove them while they check them. If they find anything in the x-ray they can't identify, they'll hand search your luggage. I've had them search everything from pens to umbrellas to bags of feminine products (I'll admit they check my pens when I was running late ... guess I looked suspicious and too sweaty ). They then pick people randomly as they're entering the airplane to wave the wand over, and to hand check their bags. I was the only person on one flight last year, and had to get thoroughly checked *everywhere* because they had nobody else to pick on.

I've never seen any devices that check luggage before it goes through the X-ray, but everything else sounds exactly like what I've seen. Some places only want to see your ID when you go through security, but some want to inspect it at every place in the airport where you would stop. I've had my bags inspected, but they came out with things that I had forgotten were in there, and were forbidden to go on the plane. First they found a screwdriver that I had thrown in there one time when I was moving, and then they found a pair of wire strippers that had I lost 6 months before. They gave me the option of surrendering them for good or paying 5 bucks to get them mailed to me at home.