I fly a lot and personally I think these measures are way overboard.
If the key threat is liquid explosive then simply ban liquids in all baggage and only allow on board beverages bought from vending machines at the gate.
We currently X-ray bags and use dogs for solid explosives the new threat is liquid. The banning of electronic devices is to stop detonators, but with no explosive then the detonator is pointless so why bother ?
Ban all liquids other than from a controlled source and scan for solids as we did before.
The other problem is we are only plugging the threat at one end. You can consider the commercial avaition system as a sealed system with entry at any point giving you access to the whole system. Hence if someone gets on a plane in, say, Greece where security is less than 100%, with a transfer in London to go to the US on a non-US airline then, as they won't be screened in London for the transfer (they are already in the system), all the screening at London departures won't stop them getting explosives on the plane. The system is only being made more secure at one end and hence is no more secure.
This is why US airlines are re-screening ALL passengers at the gate because they don't know where they came from. It is also why ALL passengers doing international transfer through the US have to collect their bags and re-do security.
Examples:-
I recently did 3 trips to Buenes Aires from Santiago. A work tool, which was basically an 8" peice of steel with a shaped flat blade end, had slipped out of it's case into the bottom of my laptop bag during the previous days and I went through security at Santiago 3 times with this without knowing and it never got picked up - and example of piss poor screening.
Now consider I flew home from Chile via the US. Leg 1 landed at Dallas where we collected all our bags, went through customs and immigration and re-did security. One of my hold bags was opened and searched. Leg 2 was on to Boston and then back to Heathrow. The US have created a sealed system within the system. The alternative route would have been Chile to Spain (Madrid) and on to Heathrow. In that scenario I would not have been rechecked in Madrid. IF I had then had another transfer say to New York then I could have simply transfered to the next flight unchecked.
The aviation system is only as secure as the weakest link in the system.
After the measures introduced here in UK the Eurostar train pax count went up 10%. My bet is it's people going to Paris or Brussels to catch trans- Atlantic flights from there.
I carry two pieces on usually - my laptop which is my key work tool, and my cameras; both of these I cannot afford to lose. All this is doing is making life difficult and moving the terrorists point of entry.
