avroflyer_1 wrote:@Flanker2 There is just no point in keeping these checks up, it's just ridiculous...
You don't go trough a check to enter a shopping mall, cinema, train station,... either, do you? While essentially those places could be a target too with an equal amount of victims if they were to attack it.
So why should an airport have such entry checks? especially since BRU is the only airport in the west that has it...
Would you pay 1 million to buy a lottery ticket with which you can win 0,50 EUR?
BRU is the center of an economy, it creates business and supports a lot of jobs.
The cost of securing the entry to the departure hall is minimal compared to the economic damage that can be done.
Let's compare it with the metro.
If another bomb goes off inside the metro, the next day people will move by car or still take the metro for lack of alternatives. The impact on the rest of the population is minimal.
It's not justifiable for the added security to cost 2 Euro's when the ticket costs 1 Euro, it's cheaper to close down the metro.
If another bomb goes off inside the departure halls, the next day people will avoid BRU and use any of the other airports as alternative. You can close SN and you might as well close BRU once and for all. 30.000 jobs down the drain. The impact on the rest of the population is huge.
It's justifiable to have added security that costs 2 Euro's when you are paying 30 Euro's for security and the use of the airport, and that said airport is making hundreds of millions in profits.
The shareholders won't be poorer for 10% less profits, so here it's financially viable to do it.
As for the shopping mall, supermarket, universities, etc...
Here too, the impact is limited. People are dispersed and the damage is limited to the structure itself. It has happened in the past, people move on.
But it has already happened once in BRU and BRU can't afford for it to happen again.
Imagine the local police says that you are only allowed to open 2 cash registers at the same time "for safety reasons we don't discuss about".
That is what happened at Brussels Airport today. Plenty of airport staff, plenty of airline staff, 110 registers in the departure hall. But only 3 police checks. And police unions forbit that a 4th is opened.
I would like to see evidence of that because I think that it's bullsh*t. I've been in that line and through the police check, so I know what is going on.
Police unions are saying that not enough staff was made available by BRU for the actual pre-screening at the X-rays and that is where the bottleneck is. When I went through, the police officers were doing nothing between pax, because the line to the X-ray was stuck.
A police officer takes 5 seconds to check the passport and boarding pass of the passengers. It can take less than 5 seconds if there is BRU staff to tell pax reaching the police checkpoint to keep it ready, even if there is not a lot of police staff.
One police officer can hence check 720 pax per hour if everything is well-organised, or 2100 pax per hour if there are 3 police officers and BRU staff to support them. That is well above the required capacity for BRU departures, even on the busiest days.
It takes more than 20 seconds to go through the x-rays though.
One police check line can support more than 3 X-ray lines, because it takes way longer to go through the X-rays than have the passports checked. So BRU can make sure that for every police officer checking passports at the entrance of a tent, there are at least 3 screening lines inside the tent.
I wouldn't even care if BRU had to pay for additional police officers themselves. Their shareholders know that investing always comes with risk and the worst that could happen has happened. I couldn't care less if they're going to make less profits and nor will they.
The best proof that BRU is p*ssing at the pax is the lack of support in those queues. If really this was caused by the police unions trying to sabotage for their own gain, BRU should have staff handing out blankets, wheelchairs, hot soup, water bottles and snacks in those queues so that they can at least show appreciation for the pax. I see none of that, so I point the finger at BRU.