British pilots petition Government over security checks

They've been complaining about it for years and now the UK's pilots are doing something more concrete about the way they're treated by airport security. More than 1,300 of them have taken advantage of an e-petition system introduced by the Blair administration to make their concerns public. The effort was co-ordinated via the Pprune website.

It's mostly anecdotal of course, but there does seem to be plenty of evidence that security staff at numerous airports are quite unable to get their heads round the fact that, if the pilot has decided to re-enact 911, then taking his Swiss Army knife from him is really not going to prevent it. And he has simpler techniques at hand than mixing together liquid explosives disguised as after-shave.