Roger of Australia
November 1, 2016
Banning Hand Baggage to Improve Evacuation of Aircraft in Emergencies
When I was regular traveller on the British Airways shuttle from London, Heathrow to Belfast in the early 1980s during what was euphemistically known as ‘The Trouble’, for a period no hand baggage of any sort was permitted on the flights. Even women had to check their handbags. Unless I was staying overnight I just took a couple of meeting papers in an open manila folder. Nobody complained and the system worked very well. Of course, this was before the age of pocketable mobile phones, laptops and tablets. Even though bombs were going off in London from time to time and much more regularly in Northern Ireland, apart from the ban on hand baggage security was nothing like as obtrusive as it is today. I am not aware of any incident involving flights in and out of Belfast during this period. Given the continued failure rate by airport screeners in detecting dangerous items that was recently reported perhaps there is a need to re-appraise the current approach.
