People still do water, scissors, aerosols, laptops, iPads and the rest. My worst was the guy that went through security with steel cap boots…
Although I did realise the last time, that Virgin has a separate security screening during peak hours for gold class or above. Had no clue and used it for the first time last week. So much faster…
(Laughs as a former Aviation Screen Officer)
Oh, boy. You’ve got no idea. Steel cap boots were our bread & butter. I’ve got stories that will make you never want to fly domestic again.
I used to take pleasure when people would complain about us confiscating tools like Swiss Army Knives and Leatherman’s.
It was at that job that I started truly despising humanity.
Got a mate who used to work at screening for the packages coming in from overseas. He said if they ever detected any “adult recreational devices” it was 100% guaranteed they’d unpackage and leave them for everyone to see. His favourite was the arms length floppy one with a suction cup. Apparently went around the conveyor belt for hours, just flopping around…
Jesus people standing in line seem shocked that once they get to the head of the line they actually have to put everything in the tray & or their bag. They cant think shit through when it is literally in front of their face, so I cant imagine the stupid shit they actually have in their bags.
Mind you there can be stupidity on both sides. A friend had his brand new fly line ($250) but not the line backing, confiscated off his fly fishing reel, because it could be used to strangle someone.
Why on earth would that be in your carry on?
I would say that’s on your friend at least for that one unfortunately. I learned the hard way, after multiple searches without proper reason, they always check your bag if you have tape in there. I had strapping tape for my ankle but never realised that’s what the issue was there.
Oh yeah, you can easily identify sex toys in peoples bags. Fun fact: Don’t travel with them in your carry on. We’d pull peoples bags for ‘bag checks’ and pull them out and inspect them. We used to claim that on the X-ray they would look like “Ammunition”.
If the customer was a dick, we wouldn’t be discreet when pulling them out either. Why you need a dildo in your carry on when you’re flying to Melbourne, I mean come on. It’s not a that long a trip.
Had we the ability to do so, we so would have done this. 
Yeeeeeeeeep.
It’s the same breed of people who wait in line at a coffee shop/pub/maccas get to the front of the queue and then spend 5 minutes deciding what they want.
They’re also mouth breathers, generally.
Had this a few times:
“Dude, why are you taking my tape”
“Because it’s a restricted item”
“It’s tape”
“And what can tape be used for…”
“…”
“I’d hate to see the plane get taken hostage, and they decide to use your tape to tie you and the rest of the passengers up as hostages”
“Oh…”
People are stupid. I’ve confiscated zip ties off people and then blew up over it.
I could literally write a book on the stuff I encountered.
Depends on where you are. In Darwin you don’t have to take laptops etc out of your bag anymore.
When I quit the job, they were trialling new systems in place for things like this.
One of the (multiple) issues is that the screen process is done by private security companies contracted to the airport. This is tendered out, and you can have different security companies across the country. Now, in theory, the security rules should all be standardised across the country - that’d make sense. But they’re not. It’s also down to the individual airport, and sometimes, airlines.
For example: I worked in the T3 Qantas terminal at Sydney Airport. Because Qantas hold the lease on the building, they have a lot of sway in how the security process is managed. They also didn’t like spending money on upgrading systems in the terminal. Over in T2, the terminal is run by Sydney Airport. Most of their systems are updated regularly and have better equipment.
As a result, Qantas were actually particular in how certain processes were adhered too, which would be completely different if we were to work a shift across the road in T2 or T1.
Ideally, and what should happen is the screening process should not be outsourced to private “security” (calling PS in Australia Security is a bit of an oxymoron - we were essentially glorified customer service reps waving a ETD wand). It should either be done by the Australian Federal Police or the Border Force. But alas, it’s not. And PSC in Australia will hire just about anybody (it’s not difficult to get your security license), and there were a lot of people who I worked with who didn’t take the job seriously, and quite frankly, should not have been responsible for the security of checking people’s luggage.
It’s dumb luck that honestly there hasn’t been a major incident with screening in Australia.
I’m talking about screening packages, rather than airport security.
You’ll find the equipment is basically the same. We had to screen packages going through the airport as well.
My mate just joined Border Force and it was suprisingly difficult to do so. Sounds like Border Force still does international vs domestic being outsourced? In fairness it’s probably cheaper and easier to outsource to private companies than to manage staffing etc as a government organisation. I remember my sister-in-law who works for a council was telling me about the process they used to a hire a staff member in a completely different area from her. She had to sit in as an impartial observer outside of the team, for each interview. All the candidates were screened and interviewed multiple times and at any stage, a candidate could claim the process was unfair and demand a review, which would have set them back weeks if not months.
Border force handle all incoming pax, and immigration sides of things.
We never dealt with them. We would deal with the AFP on a lot of issues though, and rightly so they hated us (not necessarily individually, just as a role) because should we uncover something serious we’d inevitably fuck it up.
For example: One of the shifts I was on a colleague did a bag check on a customer once and discovered a large amount of white powder in a Zip lock bag, but only after after they had pulled it out of the bag, and (stupidly) opened it, casuing it to spill everywhere.
Now, fortunately for everyone involved the substance turned out to be nothing more than protein powder, and resulted in nothing more than annoyance to the customer who would have to forgo his morning protein shake, but something that might alarm you is our process for when we found drugs was to just “let it through and not touch it”.
You could literally come through with a brick of heroin inside your luggage and it would be let through. Our ETD wands weren’t configured to pick up drugs (unlike border forces) so we wouldn’t know. And if we reported it to management and higher ups they’d complain about the paperwork involved, especially during peak periods.
Weapons were an interesting one. We had to shut down the terminal several times for firearms, but a certain airline kept trying to loosen the policy on knives, scissors, and other “tools” because they didn’t want unhappy customers.
We had very little training in anything actual security wise. I befriended a couple of the AFP cops who would patrol around, and learnt some uselfull tips off them.
But generally (dunno if its changed much in the last 5 odd years) our security is alarmingly lax.
Well that explains how I’ve seen groups of Sydneysiders BYO marching powder to Surfers. I always thought one of the poor bastards had to drive up.
The AFP were not impressed with the aforementioned incident. We were told we would be getting “training” on what to do if we encountered “suspicious” powders.
What we got (several months later) was a brief email warning about the dangers of Fentanyl.
The process and the system is an utter joke.
I hope the training was as crazy as American law enforcement who seem to treat fentanyl as the world’s worst ever poison.
Seems weird I’ve never died with the amount of fentanyl i splash around all day
Pretty much was the memo we received.
Something along the lines of a pin head amount can kill you.
I understand it’s lethal, but they make it sound like anthrax.
Yeah I don’t get it, I’m at work opening ampoules of it barehanded while chatting to people.
Why? Just to embarrass someone?