Europe’s busiest airport is lastly ditching some of the cumbersome necessities at safety checkpoints.
London’s Heathrow Airport (LHR) on Friday introduced it formally scrapped its limits on carry-on liquids.
Meaning now you can move via Heathrow safety with a full-size bottle of shampoo, water or sunscreen — and also you needn’t take away it out of your bag, both.
Passengers had beforehand been restricted to 100 milliliters per container for any fluids they needed to carry via checkpoints. (That is roughly equal to the three.4-ounce limitation the Transportation Safety Administration continues to implement right here within the U.S.)
Depend this as one problem eliminated for vacationers connecting in London, flying onward to a different world vacation spot — or getting ready to make the trek house to the U.S.
The relaxed guidelines apply to the entire airport’s terminals. Flyers now not need to take away giant digital gadgets from their luggage, both.
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Transferring towards the top of 100-milliliter liquids limitations
The tip of the liquids limitations at London’s major world hub has been a very long time coming.
It has been years for the reason that U.Ok.’s Division for Transport ordered airports to start preparing to take away this safety checkpoint rule, owing to upgrades in screening know-how.
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However whereas quite a few individual airports have relaxed liquids rules (each within the U.Ok. and European Union), rolling again this decades-old coverage has encountered loads of delays.
Friday’s announcement that Heathrow has achieved away with liquids limitations, although, is a significant milestone in making airport safety in Europe extra seamless for vacationers.
“Each Heathrow passenger can now depart their liquids and laptops of their luggage at safety as we change into the biggest airport on this planet to roll out the newest safety scanning know-how,” Heathrow CEO Thomas Woldbye mentioned in a statement Friday. “Meaning much less time getting ready for safety and extra time having fun with their journey – and tens of millions fewer single-use plastic luggage.”
To Woldbye’s level, airport leaders count on they’re going to save 16 million plastic luggage by ditching this regulation — since passengers beforehand needed to corral all of their liquid product containers in baggies earlier than passing via safety.
Safety will get smoother for tens of millions of vacationers
Heathrow is a significant hub for journey between the U.S. and Europe.
Airways operated 41,000 flights from LHR to the U.S. in 2025, based on knowledge from aviation analytics agency Cirium.
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The looming query now: Will the U.S. comply with go well with and ditch its decades-old 3-1-1 liquids policy?
Final summer time, the Trump administration signaled it was open to exploring an analogous change, although TSA officers have long told me that the top to the company’s liquids, gels and aerosols limitations was probably years away.
“I am hoping it is going to be earlier slightly than later. Nevertheless it’s not across the nook,” former TSA Administrator David Pekoske instructed me in late 2024.
Airports all over the world carried out measurement restrictions on carry-on liquids amid terrorism considerations within the mid-2000s.
However improved bag-screening tech in recent times has led safety officers in lots of components of the world to start rethinking these insurance policies.
Within the U.S., the TSA in July 2025 ended one other longtime safety requirement: The company stopped requiring most passengers to take away their footwear at checkpoints.
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