British Airways chairman: "stop kowtowing to US aviation security demands"

Martin Broughton, the chairman of British Airways, has called on Britain's aviation industry to stop "kowtowing" to the USA's ridiculous and inconsistent aviation "security" procedures. Broughton points out that carriers flying to the US from Britain are forced to subject their passengers to inconvenient and expensive checks that internal US flights often omit. Meanwhile, Colin Matthews, the head of BAA, has called for scrapping all security procedures and starting over with "a clean sheet of paper."

He suggested the practice of forcing passengers on US-bound flights to take off their shoes and to have their laptops checked separately in security lines should be dropped, during a conference of UK airport operators in London.

There was no need to "kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done", said Broughton. "America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do. We shouldn't stand for that. We should say 'we'll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential'."

UK should not put up with US airport security – BA chairman

(Image: Airport security. Get ready to de-shoe, a Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike (2.0) image from redjar's photostream)