UK/US Airport Security

Time for a bit of a tangent - back to the trek next post, honest.

I've just arrived in Jersey after a short flight from Gatwick. I didn't measure the actual times spent on each part of the journey, but I'm pretty sure I spent longer in the queue for airport security than I did in the plane. Security - that's the bit after check in and before duty-free! This has happened to me a few times in the last year or two at Gatwick, Heathrow and Luton, and it seems to be becoming more common in today's terror-alert age.

I saw a related news story today about US security - except this one concerns incoming passengers. For the last few years the US has been collecting two fingerprints from everyone entering (including transit passengers, which I don't get). Now they want to start collecting prints from all ten fingers. They don't think this will take much longer than collecting two, but anyone sensible would find that doubtful.

I travel quite a bit with work and do holidays on top, but in the last few years, apart from some regular trips to Zurich, I haven't had to use many major-city airports in developed/western countries, apart from London and the USA. I have however been through Gambia, Phnom Penh and Kathmandu recently, and compared to UK/USA airports, these have been a breeze to navigate - the people are friendlier too.

I'm probably very wrong, but perhaps the moral of all this is if you really want to fly from the UK to the US, you might actually save travelling time by booking your flights between Paris and Canada and taking trains the rest of the way to avoid all the crazy airport security.