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I got to see just how meaningless the question routine had become last week, when I flew to Winnipeg. My stopover was supposed to be in Chicago, but the boarding time came and went and then the airline announced that passengers whose final destination was not Chicago should pick up their bags at the baggage claim, then return to the ticket desk to be rerouted, since Chicago was besieged by thunderstorms. So I went downstairs, picked up my bag, headed back up to the ticket counter, got rerouted through Toronto, and then the woman behind the counter asked me the questions.
"Has anyone unknown to you asked you to carry an item on this flight?"
"No," I answered by rote.
"Have any of the items you are traveling with been out of your immediate control since you packed them?"
"No," I said.
It wasn't until much later that I realized, hey, wait — actually, my bag was out of my immediate control from the time I checked it the first time to the time I picked it up again two hours later. Whoops. And then it occurred to me: the airline staff knew perfectly well that that was the case! They knew that everyone's bags had been out of their owner's immediate control, and yet accepted the "no" answers without even blinking. Either they didn't care, or, more likely, they didn't give it a moment's thought — the questions had just become random syllables whose answers they had come to ignore. Looks like the phase-out came none too soon.
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