Airport security

We travelled home from our annual Christmas and New Year visit to Scotland last week by the usual stages: Day 1 - A Scottish airport (Glasgow as it happened) to London Heathrow and then LHR to Lisbon; overnight in Lisbon then, Day 2 - LIS to an Azorean island served by direct flights from LIS (Terceira as it happened) and then TER to Flores via a stop at Horta on Faial.

Flores Airport

Now everyone's favourite travel bugbear is, of course, airport security. Let's look first at how they did it in Portugal. We went through the usual security checkpoint at Lisbon Airport. Then, when we arrived at Terceira Airport (which does not belong to the same company as LIS), because we were transit passengers for an onward flight, we went through a different door from the people ending their journey at TER. This kept us "airside" so that we didn't need to pass through security again before boarding our next flight to Flores. (If we'd accidentally gone through the wrong door, then of course we'd have needed to pass through security again.)

Terceira Airport - photo credit alfonsotrinidad

This all seems a perfectly sensible way of doing things so let's contrast it with how it's done in the UK. We pass through security at Glasgow Airport and then, despite following the transit passengers channel at Heathrow - an airport which also belongs to BAA plc, the same company as owns GLA - you have to go through security again!

This leads me ineluctably (as we lawyers are fond of saying even though we don't know what it means) to one of two conclusions - either the LHR security staff don't trust the GLA security staff to do their job properly or else BAA plc can't trust themselves to design an airport whereby transit passengers are kept isolated on the airside. Which is it? I think we should be told.