Flyers dump £1.8m of goods at UK airports every day

● Passengers fall foul of restrictions on liquids and potential weapons

Almost £2 million worth of goods are confiscated or thrown out at UK airports every day, as passengers fall foul of airport security rules.

A study found that passengers are ditching £1.8m of items such as beauty products, suncream and knives after failing to understand regulations which ban liquids over a certain size or potential weapons from being taken on planes as hand luggage.

The report, from Direct Line Travel Insurance, said that £608m worth of goods are thrown away every year by passengers. On average, more than 81,000 items are confiscated every single day at airports, affecting around 1,183 passengers an hour in the UK alone.

Half of the abandoned goods are water which has to be poured away, with the next most common item alcohol, followed by skincare products and deodorant.

Despite the 100ml restriction for liquids taken on to aircraft being implemented in August 2006, one in eight adults who had an item confiscated said they did not realise there was a limit.

A further 22 per cent who had items removed from their luggage were unaware there were any restrictions at all.

Tom Bishop, head of travel insurance at Direct Line, said: “It is astonishing to see the sheer scale of personal items confiscated by airport security every day and the amount of money Brits are throwing away, not forgetting the time it takes airport security services to search for restricted items.

“With airport security increasing across Europe to ensure the safety of passengers, it is important that flyers are aware of what is in their luggage and remove any restricted items prior to arriving at the airport.”

A quarter of flyers who have had something confiscated said the error had occurred because they had forgotten to take restricted items out of their hand luggage before leaving for the airport, while a further one in four had items confiscated because they were unaware that they had the item in their luggage.

However, one in 11 admitted they had “chanced their luck”, thinking they could sneak restricted items through airport security without staff noticing.