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Comment by leoedin | Hacker News Reader

You can always tell Americans at security in a European airport because they take their shoes off. European airports don't bother with shoe removal.

Are European airports statistically less secure than American airports? Is anyone even monitoring this? Surely by now we'd have some data to decide whether you need to remove your shoes or not.

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I accidentally had a small multi tool in my bag at Frankfurt once.

The security agents took it out, unfolded the knife blade, discussed it a bit in German and handed it back to me.

"It's OK! It's just a little guy! Go ahead".

Working for a cruise line, I got pulled out of line in Genoa, Italy and had my stuff searched for having a multi tool. Which they kept.

So it depends I guess.

I had the same experience but in the Netherlands. This was after flying through Miami and London with the same tool. Totally forgot it was on me.

I just don't carry a multi-tool any longer no matter how TSA safe it's supposed to be. It's not just the US though. I had one of those super cheap 2-part wine corkscrews (no foil cutter) confiscated in Spain.

You will never dodge the odd malicious gate agent.

We were late for a flight in the Philippines and the gate agent knew it. Told me all of my travel fishing gear was contraband - even the rod and reel. Straight up stole all my fishing gear figuring (correctly) it was worth less to me than making my flight.

One security agent at Frankfurt would not allow me to take my toothpaste through Schengen security. I had many hours until my flight so I took my luggage (and toothpaste) back to the non-Schengen area and waited until that security agent took a break and then went through security. From what I could tell she told other agents about me (she talked to them each in turn and pointed at me while talking). None of them fussed over my toothpaste when I went through. I and felt like I won the FU lottery.

I live in Germany since 2014 and yes, I had ample example of both super-strict and fairly relaxed attitude about these cases.

Not entirely true, in Ireland you are required to take off boots that cover your ankles. Sneakers or other bare ankle shoes can be kept on.

I've always kept by boots on flying out of Dublin.

Flying Dublin to US was incredibly backward. First you go through Dublin airport security, then you walk through a beautiful terminal, lots of food, drink, etc., so you grab a bunch of drinks, maybe a sandwich, unaware that you are about to have to throw it all away because you have to go through TSA and US Customs once you reach the "American" terminal.

So after throwing away perfectly good food and multiple bottles of water because our flight was coming up, we then had to sit in a terminal that only had 2 snack choices and no real food offerings.

I've decided to never fly out of Dublin to the US again. Even if that means I have to fly to London just to transfer to the US.

Most airports in Canada work similarly when flying to the US. It's actually an advantage because you go through US customs on departure and can fly into any US airport, even smaller non-international ones that don't have customs.

I've had this happen in New Zealand but only once. It's probably a rule outside the US but not enforced as strictly as in the US.

Perhaps it's more likely at an American airport, but I've been asked to remove shoes in both the UK and Portugal when flying to other European countries.

> European airports don't bother with shoe removal.

They do, just kind of “at random”. I had it sometimes a bit of everywhere in Europe.

Same. Sometimes I've been asked by someone walking the queue to remove my boots. Never do, never a problem. I'm sure they just walk the queue so it feels like "something" is happening and you're not just waiting in yet another interminable queue.

if there are nails in the boots it triggers the metal detector. My boots aren’t glued (like timberlands and doc martins might be) and they trigger the detectors.

Almost all of my shoes nowadays have steel toes in them. I think my count for being told to not take them off because they expect them not to exceeds being asked to take them off. Never flown out of a non-EU country.

In my experience if you have tall soles/chunky boots they often ask you to take them off. Also if something bad happened there's sometimes theater where everyone has to take them off and they swab your hands.

They do if you have high shoes like boots.

I always fold up my pant legs so they can see I have low shoes and then it's no issue.

I flew out of FCO this August, everyone had to remove their shoes.

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