Britain should stop "kowtowing" to US demands over airport security, the chairman of British Airways, Martin Broughton, has said, adding that American airports did not implement some checks on their own internal flights.

He suggested the practice of forcing passengers on US-bound flights to take off their shoes and to have their laptops checked separately in security lines should be dropped, during a conference of UK airport operators in London.

There was no need to "kowtow to the Americans every time they wanted something done", said Broughton. "America does not do internally a lot of the things they demand that we do. We shouldn't stand for that. We should say 'we'll only do things which we consider to be essential and that you Americans also consider essential'."

The remarks, reported in the Financial Times, were not disputed by BA. No one wanted weak security, Broughton said, but added: "We all know there's quite a number of elements in the security programme which are completely redundant and they should be sorted out."

These included the requirement to remove footwear, brought in after British "shoe bomber" Richard Reid hid explosives in his trainers on a flight from Paris to Miami in December 2001, and differing approaches to checking laptops and other equipment.

"Take the iPad, they still haven't decided if it is a laptop or it isn't a laptop. So some airports think you should take it out and some think you shouldn't," Broughton said.

Rules on airport checks and items that can be carried in hand-luggage have got progressively tougher ever since the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Colin Matthews, chief executive of BAA, owner of Heathrow, told the FT: "Today's arrangements are incremental and I think there is a case for saying let's start from a clean sheet of paper to achieve what we want to achieve."

On Monday, transport minister Philip Hammond told the conference he wanted a new regulatory system – where the government concentrated on setting security outcomes that needed to be achieved, while operators devised security processes needed to deliver them in line with EU requirements.

However his department told the FT there were no plans to change rules on checking shoes and laptops.