Passengers travelling through all terminals at Heathrow no longer need to remove liquids or electronics from their hand luggage.
And finally, the liquids don’t have to be in little 100ml bottles in a plastic bag. They can be in a container up to two litres. And there is no limit on how many two litre bottles of IRN-BRU passengers can take.
Heathrow is now the largest airport in the world to allow this across all its terminals.
The reason for this that the UK’s largest airport has finished installing and testing its 3D security scanners.
The new scanners generate highly detailed 3D images of cabin baggage, allowing security staff to assess items inside the bags.
Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye:
“Every Heathrow passenger can now leave their liquids and laptops in their bags at security as we become the largest airport in the world to roll out the latest security scanning technology. That means less time preparing for security and more time enjoying their journey – and millions fewer single-use plastic bags. This billion pound investment means our customers can be confident they will continue to have a great experience at Heathrow.”
Delay in introducing scanners
The restrictions should have been removed from all UK airports by the end of June 2024, but at the last minute, the government put a stop in place.
Smaller airports like London City had introduced the new scanners but others including the UK’s three largest – Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester – had not met the deadline.
Some reasons given were that the new, advanced CT scanners were “misidentifying” harmless items (such as sunscreen, books, or food), causing high rates of false alarms.
Supplier
There are no specific details about the equipment supplier, but it is likely to be UK company smiths detection.
In March 2021, UK company Smiths Detection announced it had been chosen to supply integrated checkpoints throughout Heathrow Airport.
Smiths Detection is being used at Edinburgh Airport and has recently delivered Thailand’s first CT Checkpoint Systems to Airports of Thailand.
Intersetingly, Heathrow says ‘The £1bn upgrade has seen passenger security lanes across all four of Heathrow’s terminals replaced with state-of-the-art CT scanners,’
In June 2019, Heathrow said it was investing £50 million in the same scheme.
That’s inflation for you.
Other UK airports
While Heathrow is the largest airport to roll out the new high-tech scanners, it is far from the UK’s first.
At most UK airports, passengers can keep electrical items and liquid containers of up to 100ml in their hand baggage.
Gatwick, Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh allow passengers to keep liquids in containers up to 2 litres.
At Glasgow, London City, Luton, Manchester, Newcastle, and Stansted, liquids and electricals stay in the bag, but liquids still must be in 100ml containers.
At least when an airport still has the 100ml restriction, there is no need to put them in the little plastic bag.
Heathrow estimates it will save almost 16 million plastic bags per year.
Will the scanners speed up passenger scanning
A recent report by consumer group Which? found that the sensitivity of the new scanners at some airports means more bag searches end up being carried out by hand.
My own experience backs this up. On multiple flights from London City and Amsterdam, security took much longer than before. It seemed to me that more than half of all bags are being hand searched.
