Jayne Dowle: Airport security isn't about consumer choice... it's a matter of life and death

Tweezers, fretting about laptops, throwing your bottled water away and putting all your personal bits and pieces into a plastic bag. In the scheme of things, what difference does it actually make? Except, potentially, the very fact that you have to do it might save your own life and the lives of everyone else you find yourself trapped with, in a metal tube, hurtling defenceless, in mid-air.

Sure, it takes time to queue. And it can be intrusive. But those who complain are a) selfish and b) have very short memories.

When they are standing there whining about having to pay for the plastic bag they forgot and tutting over the elderly woman struggling at the scanner with her walking stick, do they not remember 9/11? And all the other bomb plots foiled since then? Well, the discovery of a bomb on a cargo aircraft from Yemen at East Midlands airport should remind them that no short cuts can be taken with safety.

I know the device was found on a cargo plane, and not on an airliner full of passengers, but its very existence proves that security measures can never be too vigilant. And who knows what the purpose of that bomb was? Was it headed to blow up a passenger aircraft? Was it be detonated over a city? We should never under-estimate the imagination of terrorists.

And how ironic that the bomb was found just days after Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA, backed by various Government ministers, had called for stringent security checks to be relaxed in order to cut down on "airport hassle".

They argue that the process has become too complex, that the measures are contradictory, and that America lays down the rules, but then doesn't practise what it preaches.

As far as I can tell, no-one has actually cited "must save money" as another reason, but you can bet that it is part of the story, seeing as security now accounts for 35 per cent of airport operating costs, according to Airports Council International.

Well, surely these people who run airports, and the ministers who direct security policy have a responsibility to ensure that security runs as smoothly as possible. What have they been doing all these years if they haven't managed to come up with a safe, efficient and cost-effective system?

Deciding to scale it down now is nothing but an admission of defeat, and an open invitation to terrorists. Even if suspects do get through, the very presence of stringent checks acts as a deterrent. And why do we have to be led by the Americans?

The last time I looked, the United Kingdom was a separate country. Can't we just decide what we want to do to be safe, and sort it out? The reformers have been rather quiet these past few days. I can only hope that the discovery of the bomb is causing a serious rethink.

What do I know though? I'm only a passenger. But whether I am travelling alone, or with my two young children, I don't mind how long I have to wait, if I think it is going to make it safe. As a parent, you can't help but imagine what it must be like to die in an aircraft and never see your children again. And as a parent, looking down at the innocent trusting faces of your children, excited to be flying away on holiday, but full of trepidation, you just want to do

everything you possibly can to protect them. It isn't exactly a laugh, removing their shoes, seeing their eyes widen in fright as they step into the scanner, and watching teddy be x-rayed, but for them, it's just the way it is, and they are growing up accepting it.

When we flew to Barcelona from Manchester this summer, I was so fed up of the whingeing around me from other passengers, I actually made a point of thanking the airport staff when we got through. They looked amazed. Who would want the stress and responsibility of their job? But they couldn't have been more cheerful.

Talk about "airport hassle". I bet they could have told some tales of arrogant passengers who reckon they are above the law. And that, I suspect is what is at the heart of this idea to scale back airport security. Too many people think that the world has been created to revolve around themselves and their immediate demands. Ask them to do something they don't fancy, and the first thing they do is complain.

They might even take their business elsewhere, fly from another airport, make their connections abroad. But you can't complain about airport security like you complain about a bad meal in a restaurant or poor service in a shop. We should all remember that it's not a consumer choice, it is a matter of life or death.