Wednesday, August 01, 2007

Airline sanity being restored

Some sanity is finally being restored to the airport security standards dropped on us all by the EU. Despite the fact that no one blew up a plane using liquid explosives and all we had was reports of an alleged plot, air passengers in the EU have spent the last year afraid that their bottle of water, their can of deodorant, or their makeup would be confiscated and destroyed. I haven't heard of any trial of the terrorists or seen any evidence on TV of how close we came to some type of airline armageddon caused by bottles of water and rewired MP3 players. Still liquids are banned, but not MP3 players, and passengers have to endure lengthening queues to be searched by security officers who know the bottles of water they confiscate are just bottles of water. The authorities handed the terrorists a victory by disrupting the flow of air traffic around the world without them having to actually blow anything up.

Now the EU is finally starting to ease those restrictions. If you buy a bottle of liquid in a duty free in an airport, with appropriate security, outside the EU and then later have to transit planes in a European airport you wont have to hand over your bottle of whiskey for, ahem, destruction by the security guards. Who knows maybe in a few years we'll be able to bring our own bottles of water and not have to buy them from airlines.

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