This may be a bit on the mundane side of MPSIMS but it surprised me.
I was at NICE airport on the 7th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. I watched the people destined for Gatwick spend a ridiculous amount of time going through the security check area. (They seemed to be body-searching every single person)
An hour or two later we checked in. I walked over to security…fully expecting to be felt up by someone and have my hand-luggage (a camera rucksack with a tripod attached underneath) rifled through. All I got was, (in a french accent) “Any liquids or sharp objects?”
I answered “Erm…No”
I was asked “What’s in your pockets?” (gollum?)
“Just a tissue and my ticket”
The reply was a faint smirk, and then a gesture to go through.
That was it.
In all fairness they did send my bag through the x-ray thing, but they didn’t send me through it. I could have had anything on my person and I would probably have got through security.
I took a domestic flight within the U.S. on 9/11/08. My carry-on was x-rayed and I went through a metal detector. I wasn’t asked about liquids or sharps either. What exactly were you expecting; a full cavity search of every passenger?
I also flew Thursday and got people who couldn’t recognize a lint roller (I guess it could look like kinda like a club on the monitor) and had no idea what a shaving brush was until told (via mime) by the supervisor. Combine that with the fact that I have this funny bag that they’d never seen before but couldn’t touch to help them out because of regulations meant I was standing there on the secure side of the metal detector for a good ten minutes while they unpacked half my stuff and sent it through the X-ray again. Of course, they had no idea how to put it back together. Then, coming back and clearing security in Albany on Saturday, I was told that I was a “good boy” by some old woman employed by TSA because I correctly followed all their stupid regulations without having to be told first.
I flew from Halifax to Toronto in July and the guys at the xray machine spent 5 minutes mulling over the coin purses in my children’s backpacks…like they had never seen money before! It was ridiculous…they even scanned both backpacks twice. I’m usually pretty cooperative about these things when they make sense but I couldn’t help but speak up and ask them “why don’t you just search the bloody bags?”