‘Much less stressful’: London City airport ends 100ml liquid rule

theguardian.com:

T here’s a litre of water plus big bottles of shampoo, sun lotion and mouthwash sloshing around next to the clothes and laptop in my green wheelie case, which has just disappeared into the mouth of the scanner at London City airport. I had even recklessly bunged in my makeup bag.

After years of being conditioned to travel with micro toiletries, my heart is beating faster. I’m waiting for a klaxon to go off and my unholy trinity of family-size Pantene, Soltan and Listerine, plus assorted cosmetics, to be unceremoniously dumped in one of the sin bins that have been stationed by security lanes since the mid-2000s.

But. Nothing. Happens. Apart from some raised eyebrows at the vat of mouthwash.

The east London hub has from Tuesday officially become the first mainstream UK airport to end the tyranny of tiny toiletries that has held sway since 2006 when the 100ml limit on liquids, pastes and gels in hand baggage was first introduced, after a foiled transatlantic bomb plot to use explosive liquids disguised as soft drinks.

Now passengers flying out of the Docklands airport can carry liquids and gels in containers of up to 2 litres in their hand baggage after it upgraded its baggage screening system to the latest CT (computed tomography) scanners, which provide a 3D image of the contents of passenger’s bag.

The technology also works for electronics, meaning the slow process of depositing belongings on to multiple trays has gone. Instead security staff cheerfully tell passengers to “leave everything inside your bags”, enabling people to file through at a much faster rate.

City announced the planned changeover last year, beginning with a trial security lane before gradually switching the rest over. With all four now upgraded, the