Passengers are needlessly removing their shoes and having their laptops inspected due to pointless security checks at airports, the chairman of British Airways has claimed
Oct. 27, 2010 (The Telegraph) -- Martin Broughton criticised “redundant” airport checks and said Britain should stop “kowtowing” to American demands for increased security.
He told the annual conference of the UK Airport Operators Association in London that many of the security checks should be scrapped.
Mr Broughton added that there was no need to “kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done” to bolster security on flights bound for the United States.
In a speech he said: “America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do. We shouldn’t stand for that. We should say, 'we’ll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential’.”
He pointed out that many of the checks, such as making passengers remove their footwear, are not required on internal US flights. It was introduced after the “shoe bomber” Richard Reid hid explosives in his shoes on a transatlantic flight in 2001.
