Security Procedures at Heathrow

Airport security is so annoying and probably so flawed that all I can do is blog about it to vent. While we were in Britain, we heard the news report about a 73-year-old man who managed to drive through a security gate at Miami International Airport and ended up on one of the main runways, fortunately, not when a plane was using it. Authorities speculated that he may have been disoriented. Duh!

With this in mind, we steeled ourselves for the security gauntlet at London's Heathrow Airport. Fortunately, there were no lines on Thursday morning, because if there had been, the many redundant procedures would have taken forever.

1. Before we could enter United's check-in area, someone examined our passports.
2. The counter agent who gave us our boarding passes and checked our baggage also looked at our passports. She also asked whether we had packed our own bags, whether our bags had been in our control since we packed them and whether anyone gave us anything to take along -- particularly pointless questions that are no longer asked in the US.
3. At the main security screening area itself, where two more people checked our passports and our boarding passes, we were astonished that we did not have to take our laptop out of its case nor did we have to remove our shoes.
4. But wait! There was more. We went from that screening area to a second screening area where we again had to show our passports and also to remove our shoes. We sent them and them alone through another device that might have been another Xray or perhaps some kind of explosives sniffing instrument.
5. Somewhere along the line, someone asked us whether any stranger had given us anything to take on the flight -- airport shop personnel presumnably excepted.
6. When we entered the waiting room for our United flight, we again had to present our passports and relinquish our boarding passes, which only returned to us when the final multi-phase screening took place. We again had to remove our shoes, which a security agent turned over to look at the soles. Was she checking whether we might have stepped into something unpleasant? Then we were frisked, not just a casual wanding but a real, hands-on pat-down. And then screeners unzipped every compartment of our carry-on bags and riffled through them. Finally, we were handed our boarding passes and permitted to wait until it was time to board the plane.

Some of these steps are standard and have been for a long time. Others might be required at all Heathrow terminals, or perhaps only for international flights, but I suspect that the final step is special treatment accorded to passengers bound for the US. I'm trying to remember the details when I flew out of Heathrow on British Airways last fall. I am quite sure that there was no separate shoe screening -- and I don't recall quite so many steps in the final pre-boarding security check. Then, the big deal was that the British Airports Authority was claiming to permit only one carry-on per passenger, but that was not enforced and has since been dropped.

When we landed at DIA, cleared immigration, finally got our bags that were so slow in coming up that they must have been put on the conveyor by a one-armed baggage handler and passed customs, we entered the main terminal. There was that recorded announcement from the Transportation Security Agency alerting everyone over and over and over that "the security level has been raised to orange..." blah, blah, blah. I think it's been perpetually on that announcement since the color-coded system was introduced -- except shortly before the last election when it was raised to red.