Passengers "almost have to strip"
Security at airports is "getting ridiculous," Peter Griffiths, the International Air Transport Association's (IATA) regional vp for Europe said today (May 14).
He said passengers "almost had to strip" to get through some security systems.
He said this level of security did not apply to travelling by train or ship.
He said he also often carried bottles of water in his hand baggage to see if he was stopped. He said it happened one in ten times.
Mr Griffiths, speaking at the Crossroads Paris conference organised by Paragon, an umbrella group for travel managers' associations, accepted there was still a "fear factor" in going through airports and flying.
But he said there was a need for global standards for security sot hat travellers knew whether they had to take out their laptops or remove their belts.
He said IATA, which he joined in April after working as director general for civil aviation at the UK Department for Transport, was "looking for one stop" security.
Mr Griffiths cited a trip he made recently from Stockholm, through Denmark to Germany where he was screened just once rather than in each country.
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| Peter Griffiths |
He said travellers were stopped taking baseball bats or tennis rackets on board in hand luggage but it would take an armoured tank to break through the door to the cockpit.
He said a "fast travel programme", like Schengen which operates between several European countries where no passports are required for crossing borders, was needed.
He said areas like self booking, baggage claim, document scanning and bag drops could all be speeded up and this would also save money.
More than half of air passengers (56%) were now using bar coded boarding passes and this was saving the industry about $1.5bn annually.
Earlier in his presentation, Mr Griffiths said that there was no sign that the recession was about to end and demand for flights grow.
He said IATA economists were looking at the situation on a daily basis to see if things were improving.
But he warned that premium traffic which had already take a hug hit, was likely to decline further.
www.acte.org [1] www.paragon.com [2]