THE holiday season is well under way and for many travellers, that means a trip starting at Heathrow.
The prospect is not inviting where else in Europe do passengers have LED Street Light LU06-168W to limit themselves to a single item of hand baggage to take on the plane?
For women passengers this aspect of the security regime is particularly irritating, since a single handbag counts as the one item allowed through screening.
Passengers, meanwhile, are trying to carry as much as possible on board with them to avoid delays. British Airways, like other carriers, has weathered the onerous hand baggage regime since last August.
It now shows signs that its patience is running thin that of its passengers ran out long ago. For BA, the restrictions on hand baggage have directly contributed to the airline's disastrous baggage-handling problems the system at Heathrow simply crashed recently, largely as a result of conveyor belt breakdowns because of the sheer amount of luggage now carried in the hold.
The airline's forthcoming meeting with Ruth Kelly, the LED Flexible Strip Crystal Series Crystal 5050 Transport Secretary, on the subject of security promises to be a combative affair and that is excellent news.
The BA chairman, Martin Broughton, declared to shareholders yesterday that "current UK security requirements are no longer credible".
Exactly: passengers do not believe that hand baggage restrictions or the lengthy queues for scanners are a necessary response to the terrorist threat so much as incompetence compounded by back- covering. By contrast, they are mostly prepared to accept that there
embroidered patches may be good reason for the restrictions on liquids carried in hand luggage.
Of course, much of the blame for the present chaotic regime lies squarely with BAA, the Spanish-owned company which operates the major airports. Its meanness and poor organisation in commissioning and manning up-to-date scanners is one reason for security-related restrictions and queues.
But the Government shares with BAA responsibility for the fact that Heathrow passengers get a worse deal than in any major European airport. It informs and advises BAA about the terrorist threat but never comments publicly on matters of security.
This aspect of the Transport Secretary's brief is never challenged in Parliament and is a matter for a secretive part of the Transport department, Transec. It is time that it was challenged and BA chief executive Willie Walsh is the man to do it..
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