While many Canadians aren’t travelling to the United States these days, those who are heading south are undoubtedly thrilled by the news that they won’t have to take off their shoes during airport security screenings anymore.
While the rest of the world’s airports long ago abandoned the knee-jerk reaction to the 2001 “Shoe-Bomber” plot, American travellers have been subjected for nearly two decades to the indignity of removing their shoes every time they fly. In all of that time, not a single shoe bomb has been discovered. The requirement came into force after Richard Reid tried to detonate a liquid explosive in his shoe on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami.
Because the Canadian Border Services Agency (CBSA) harmonizes its security procedures with the U.S. Transportation Security Administration (TSA), Canadians flying out of their home airports to the U.S. have also had to participate in that long-lasting bit of security theatre.
In an interview with the National Post, Transport Canada spokesperson Hicham Ayoun said Canadian airports will drop the security requirement for U.S.-bound passengers, adding that shoe removal “is not part of baseline screening for passengers travelling domestically or internationally from Canada.”
Will the 100-ml liquid rule be next? Don’t count on it. While new scanner technology might make the rule redundant, the TSA has said it won’t consider dropping the rule before 2040 because it would take that long to have enough of the new scanners in place. However, Europe is another story.
In Edinburgh and a few other UK airports, they are letting passengers fly with bottles as big as 2 litres which means you can bring back your souvenir bottle of scotch whisky in your carry-on! The rest of the European Union was set to drop the liquids limit last year thanks to the new scanners, but technical problems have delayed the change until further notice.
In case you’ve forgotten why the rule is in place, it was the response to a plot thwarted in 2006 that had would-be terrorists bringing liquids onboard a commercial airliner that could be combined to make an explosive device to bring down the plane.
It seems with each new plot, airports add another screening procedure to make flying even more annoying. Do you remember the “Underwear Bomber?” Thankfully, it didn’t require passengers to doff their undergarments, but it did get us familiar with full-body scanners thanks to Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s failed attempt to detonate explosives hidden in his underpants while on a U.S.-bound flight in 2009.
These days, probably the most dangerous thing being loaded on planes is not terrorist bombs, but the lithium batteries that virtually every passenger brings onboard in their cell phones, laptops and other electronic devices. These things have been known to catch fire when you least expect them to and are the reason that you can no longer leave them in your checked luggage.
Needless to say, the terrorists are already on it. Russia was accused of plotting to bring down Western cargo planes using lithium-fueled bombs.
