The government wants to reduce the amount of queueing required of passengers The transport secretary has signalled his willingness to change the regulations on security checks at British airports.
Philip Hammond was responding to senior figures in the airline industry who had backed the BA chairman’s attack on measures imposed by the US.
Martin Broughton said many of the checks were “completely redundant”.
Mr Hammond said he would be allowing airlines to look at ways of “easing the passenger experience”.
He said: “What we are now going to do is give the airport operators both an incentive through the economic mechanism and the permission, through changing the regulations, to look at the way they do these security procedures and do them differently if they believe that that can reduce the queueing and ease the passenger experience.”
But he said he could not order the US to relax restrictions on passengers travelling to the states.
Mr Hammond said: “I have to defend the right of every country to define the security requirements that it places on flights entering its airspace.
“We all have a right to defend ourselves, the US probably more than any other state has reason to be fearful of terrorist attack and I wouldn’t want to suggest that it’s our place to tell the US what measures it imposes on flights going into US airspace,” he added.
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