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Actually, airport security -- at least for international flights -- in the late 60s and early 70s was not more relaxed. Having traveled quite a bit as a child i

Actually, airport security -- at least for international flights -- in the late 60s and early 70s was not more relaxed. Having traveled quite a bit as a child in those days, most international travel involved having all your bags searched by hand in front of you. The difference was that air traffic volumes were much lower, you spent less time in queues, and Concorde passengers were first class and got preferential treatment. The lightest airport security in my experience was in the mid-to-late 90s following deregulation. I flew from Sydney to Zurich in 1998 without breaking stride at either end (literally waved through every checkpoint).

snogglethorpe 12y ago
Haha, yeah... in the early '90s I was late to the airport flying out of Berlin (to Edinburgh), arriving like 10 minutes before the scheduled time... I ran like nuts to the gate, and although they were clearly furious with me, and I got a ... very personal (but fast) ... security examination, and they still let me on the plane!! [Luckily I had no baggage to check.] That was admittedly pretty ridiculous, but they were generally a bit lax back then. I thought it was actually rather odd because there had been a number of incidents, like Lockerbie, and the gulf war was a thing, and people actually were sort of worried about airplane terrorism. Not worried enough I guess...