Adding to what the other comments say, these days a lot of the time through security is wasted on the multiplicity of items that have to go through the scanners.

Instead of just chucking your hand luggage on the conveyor belt, you have to take out your laptop and tablet, you have to take off your jacket, belt and shoes, and assorted metal things (keys, etc.) -- I usually end up having to use four trays for all my stuff when traveling internationally.

I remember the 90s well, when the security gate took less than 20 seconds -- you walked through the metal detector and then waited for your bag. Since the queue wasn't jammed up with people, your bag usually came out at the same time that you were done walking through the detector. Occasionally something set off the detector, of course, but then they just made you go through again without the offending item.

It's definitely much worse now.

I've never spent more than ~30 seconds actually being screened. The delay, if there is one, is waiting to get to the front of the line to be screened. This is an embarrassingly parallel problem and security at every airport could be trivially brought down to 60 seconds maximum by operating more lanes.

I was factoring the time spent waiting in line to get screened into my nostalgia.

Uh, yes? Versus literally just walking from the taxi at the drop-off curb to your gate, it is quite a bit longer. As you mention, there were some checks added over the years, but it was lightning fast compared to the current system.

Ever notice how older airports don't have the huge snarled lines of TSA checkpoints worked into their design? Instead they have disabled escalators that the line snakes down or a ton of stanchions forming waiting areas down side hallways and such. It's because there were no huge snarled lines at a few choke points when they were designed.

Not only that, but the checkpoints didn't even start until just in front of the boarding area. I remember the huge stink (although it may have been pre-911) when O'Hare decided that no one would be allowed in the concourse unless they had a ticket. Whereas I remember my mom taking a couple flights to my grandma's back in the mid 80's, and watching her board the plane and watching it take off from the terminal window.

I'm pretty sure this was part of a pre-9/11 national security process change made around the time of the 1991 Gulf War.

Yes. Airports used to be like Amtrak.

The baggage screeners just plowed bags through and looked for a guns, cartoon style time bombs and knives. I recall rushing my aunt to JFK as a kid and literally getting to the terminal 5 minutes before takeoff -- and she made it! Consultants who had to swap gigs for whatever reason would physically exchange tickets at the airport, no problem.

> Airports used to be like Amtrak.

I suspect our ideas about the efficiency and timeliness of Amtrak may differ.

Given the discussion about Concorde (and the fact that it practically had two routes), it's probably worthwhile to point out that the UK has long had a very strong distinction between landside and airside, and airport security didn't change anywhere near as much here as it did in the US after 9/11: the risk of terrorist attacks on aircraft had long been around in the UK. The big change was not being allowed sharps in the cabin, from memory.

Security didn't deter from the LHR–JFK route before with security at the UK end, and I doubt it'd deter from it at the US end.

At London Gatwick you know first have to present your boarding pass at a first set of gates. They're horrible - travelling with children you easily get in a position where your child is on one side of the gate, and you can't get to them. Last time the gate refused to open for me after I'd sent my 6 year old through, and I had to walk off to the side with a supervisor while my son was alone on the other side, for the security guy to check my boarding pass details and let me through manually (the reason they refused to open, apparently, was that my son stood too close to the other side; my boarding pass was then marked as having been used to pass the gates, even though the gates never opened, so next try it was being rejected regardless)

Then there's the baggage x-ray and metal detection, after which my son routinely (this has happened every time at Gatwick) gets pulled aside for extra screening, which involves x-raying his shoes, and passing him through an extra scanner, and then patting him down. I usually don't have to, but if I don't it means I won't be able to accompany him through a process he already finds uncomfortable and scary.

Nobody has been able to explain why he always gets pulled aside, and it doesn't happen on the return journey from Oslo (most of our foreign trips are to visit family in Norway).

(Meanwhile we routinely forget to take bottles of water or juice out of our carry on, and nobody has ever noticed it until I've realised afterwards; in other words, the fluid restrictions only work on people who voluntarily hand it over and doesn't put it in their bags.)

So while security can be quite efficient now, for a substantial number of passengers it's gotten to be a real pain, and it's pretty much unpredictable enough that you have to plan for it to take time just in case.

Yes. I have to opt-out every time I fly now which adds ~20-30 minutes to my visit to security.

Just pay for precheck.

It's $85 for 5 years, and realistically, yes, most of that money just goes to line the pockets of the politically connected. On the other hand, you can pretty consistently go from curb to club in 5 minutes, and you bypass the nude-o-scope.

I'm all for standing up for principle, but this one is already lost. TSA doesn't care if 10 ppm of the traveling population opt out. Google "managed inclusion" if you want to understand why organizing an opt-out protest on Thanksgiving (or generally encourage people to opt out) won't change anything.

Opt-out of what?

Presumably the millimeter wave body scanners, which are both invasive and relatively unstudied in its health effects.

Apparently millimeter wave radiation can be ionizing under the right circumstances. That's sort of terrifying.

http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.5294

The paper you referred to doesn't make any claims with regards to ionization - the effects considered are mainly having to do with the molecular dynamics behaviors of DNA.