[PaulRobinson]

I say this as somebody who regularly travels around EMEA and the US: there is airport security at the same or higher level all around the World, and yet fewer people travelling in those countries seems to have the same level of problems.

My hot take is that its almost certainly a recruitment and training issue: there seem to be just enough bad apples getting through and not having poor behaviours trained out of them to mean the self-reported "these guys are idiots" numbers are higher than in other parts of the World.

[orwin]

Yeah, it is security theater, but other countries are way more relaxed than the US, especially small airports with few international flights.

When i was ~17, i had a friend with a false leg, with metal in it. We were late to our plane at a Moroccan airport (Agadir i think), we burst through the scanner gate that started beeping. He looked at the agent, tapped his leg, the agent made a "you can go" sign and we managed to get to the plane without any issue. I have seen very similar scene at Porto, it might be the mediterranean temper but i really think it has more to do with airport size (Lisbon airport agents seems more thorough)