However necessary you might consider them, no one likes airport security measures. Some people, however, seem to really dislike them,
Manchester airport has issued a long, and at times alarming, list of the passenger reactions faced by its staff since the ban on carrying liquids on planes came into force.
This, you will remember, means people can only carry a maximum of 100ml of any given fluid, gel or paste onto a flight, taken in transparent sealable plastic bags.
One passenger responded to being told he could not take his 750ml bottle of vodka onto a plane by drinking the entire thing in front of airport staff. "He had to be removed from the flight later for being drunk," the airport noted.
Others merely get irate - a passenger told he couldn't take his can of shaving foam with him decided to squirt it all over nearby x-ray machines and metal detectors instead.
Perhaps the most troubling was a passenger who had his deodorant confiscated. Using a phrase probably unfamiliar to those young enough not to remember the tactics of some IRA members in the Maze Prison, Manchester airport described his response as a "dirty protest" - emptying his bladder into a clear plastic bag in front of stunned staff.
So what does this all prove? Is it just that flying and airports can bring out the worst in people? Or does seemingly petty bureaucracy make us all crack in the end?
