I wonder if anyone on here can comment from knowledge on the following. I regularly travel to the UK, Europe and the USA and I have a camera bag which is small enough to fit on Ryanair and commuter overheads as cabin baggage and all up weighs 7 kgs.
It contains 3 bodies, three lenses, six batteries, two chargers and leads, a cleaning cloth, puffer brush and an external flash. In 2014 I took it on a 15 sector trip around the world and last autumn I did a similar trip. I have never had any trouble with its contents in security. The most I have been delayed is for a minute or so if, after x-ray I've been asked to unzip it.
Last autumn my itinerary meant the bag was x-rayed at Shannon, Heathrow, Los Angeles, Kahului, Kona, Honolulu, Auckland, Adelaide, Singapore and Hong Kong. Every time the bag went through x-ray without comment. The journey back to Ireland was broken in the UK so my wife could visit her mother in Stockport. I booked a Ryanair flight back to Dublin which meant we had to use the hell hole which is T3 in the late afternoon.
As it was November, I had a coat. My tablet, shoes and belt, coins and keys had to be removed so I ended up with a box for my belt, coins, keys and shoes, one for my coat with the tablet out of its case on the top and one for my camera bag. One of the agents told me to get another box just for the tablet. Prior to this on the trip the tablet had always gone through with other items. I was now faced with keeping an eye on four boxes.
Three of the boxes came through the machine and were delivered back. The box containing the camera bag was shunted onto another line. When I enquired what was going on I was told it needed "special inspection". After waiting 30 minutes with no sign of the bag getting much closer to inspection and with a large number of people in a similar situation, I enquired why the bag needed special attention. I was told that I should have emptied the bag. Lenses brush, cloth, leads, chargers and flash in one tray, bodies in another, bag on its own. When I pointed out that it would have meant me trying to fill seven trays and keep an eye on them all, some of which would have contained equipment with a value in four figures I was met with a shrug of the shoulders. When I told the supervisor how the bag had been treated elsewhere on the trip, I was told "this is Manchester and because our security is so good we have never had an incident".
Eventually my bag was opened and the lenses were lifted out, the rest was given a cursory glance and we made the gate as the flight started to board.
In the 1990s I owned a company which devised and ran aviation conferences. Passenger and cargo security was one area in which we specialised and I had speakers and sponsorship from the leading suppliers of scanning equipment as well as involvement from governments, IATA and ICAO and many airports. At the time I was well versed in what x-ray and other scanning devices could and could not achieve.
Time has moved on and the capabilities of the equipment has vasty improved. Is it that, as I suspect, the equipment in T3 is past its best and until the redevelopment takes place, a large number of bags have to be hand searched. I would estimate that there were 30 bags ahead of mine and a growing line behind.
I emailed the airport on returning home but did not receive a reply. Can anyone shed light on why T3 security is different from the rest of the world, particularly the very security conscious Heathrow, USA, Germany, Australia and Singapore where I have never had a problem?
