"I'd like to hear an explanation from the police of what happened on the planes that caused them to be classified as crime scenes."

Why do you think the police classified them as crime scenes? The quote is from 'a BAA Glasgow Airport spokesman ' after all.

Sounds to me more like the airport managers having an attack of headlesschickenitis....

"The attitude of airport security so clearly illustrated in this appalling story is exactly what makes airports and passenger jets such tempting targets in the first place."

Yep, got to agree with that...

> Why do you think the police classified them as crime scenes?

At 2 in the morning, the police were still refusing to allow these passengers to be on their way, instead insisting on loading them into buses and escorting them to the SEC. You could well be right about airport security blaming the police for their own idiocy, but that's not to say that the police didn't exhibit plenty of home-grown idiocy to take the blame for as well.

All good points, and well put.

One would hope that once an airport is under attack the authorities might consider it wise to get potential victims evacuated asap, instead of imprisoning them at the scene of the attack.

Its since been admitted that there were no armed police at the airport - good job the jihadis hadn't had the foresight to arm themselves with, say, a knife. Lots of victims, all held within easy reach like sacrificial lambs.

Shame that this fiasco didn't occur in the USA - the police and/or the airport authorities would be facing a massive class action for false imprisonment by now.

I think the two diabetics should seriously consider suing the authorities.

It's not just the folk with diabetes, what about the other 1100 passengers who were left vulnerable to deep vein thrombosis, when they were locked down on those planes for all that time.

And in a place which must, by definition, have multiple emergency exits, it is just not acceptable to inflict this on the innocent. The terrorists in this case got far better treatment than the hapless customers. The airport services can get wagon loads of tasteless curly sandwiches from the public highway to the airside. They have busses, tugs, and local emergency crews.

Finally, no-one should have been left in an aircraft with aviation fuel in its tanks. If there had been a second wave attack....

Thank God they failed! I'm gonna take the opposing view that (gasp!), the men and women charged with ensuring public safety, were doing the best they knew how (given difficult circumstances). It's not a perfect science. Hindsight is definitely 20-20. These people are trying to do what's best. Trying to keep the innocent safe and yet not let the guilty slip through their fingers. Heaven forbid they fail at anything. They're in a no-win situation.

> Hindsight is definitely 20-20.

Yeah, who could have predicted that denying people their medication might damage their health?

If they were doing what they thought was best for public safety, they'd have done it to all the members of the public in the area. They didn't. People out the front of the airport, next to the attempted bombing, were not detained till two in the morning. It was only the airline passengers, nowhere near the bombing, who got this treatment.

I might add that, unlike your airports in the US, Glasgow Airport has had decades of practice at this stuff: it's always handled busy regular local flights to and from Belfast, and has therefore had highly effective anti-terrorism measures in place since the 1970s. This lockdown was not part of that; it was part of the new hysterical overbearing bureaucratic reaction put in place by our modern police-state-minded lords and masters in response to the Al Qaeda threat. It doesn't make us safer. In fact, as Bodo pointed out above, any sensible reaction to any type of attack should involve getting potential victims out of the area, not keeping them there. And, whenever the potential victims aren't on planes, it does.

"Finally, no-one should have been left in an aircraft with aviation fuel in its tanks."

Good point...

"These people are trying to do what's best. Trying to keep the innocent safe and yet not let the guilty slip through their fingers"

...and also trying to cover their backs, protect themselves from criticism and future legal action. This is where you often get these types of screw-ups, when people become so risk-averse they are paralysed and cannot do anything.

>>were not detained till two in the morning

I was told yesterday that someone who was taken off their plane just after midnight and taken to the SECC, was not allowed to leave until after 4am after being questioned.

Questioned? What the hell about?

I'm beginning to see the problem: the authorities seem to have trouble drawing a distinction between a bomb on a plane and a bomb outside an airport. They're acting like they need to isolate and close the gap in airport security that allowed the attack, when in fact the attack didn't have to bypass any security.

I am delighted to read these points and to know that I am not alone in being furious with the airport authorities and police who routinely inflict punishment on the innocent in order to prove how "tough" they are on the guilty.

The passengers should sue. They were unlawfully detained.

Too right. Airline passengers are some of the most abused citizens in any country. I am very happy that I currently don't have to or plan to use that mode of transport.