Well no matter what you say the terrorist have won the war against us, we might as such not have lost and they are running wild among us. But try to do a bit of international traveling …
I can remember the day when you pretty much could walk strait unto the plane and off you went.
I used to travel regularly between London and Paris in the Eurostar. Where I would walk up to the passport control show my passport, walk over to check in, told what platform and walk onto the train. From start to finish less that 10min, great for early morning cause I stay in bed longer.
Now, even with Europe becoming more European if you know what I mean, you queue at the passport check one for France and one for the United Kingdom, then at the security scan and then you get to check which platform.
Even with all the signs, animation on the monitors and helpful staff they have at many airports now of days, telling you that you can’t take bottles with liquid or containers with more than 100ml etc. And telling you that you can’t have your belt or jacket on and you have to take your laptop out of the bag etc etc. People still don’t do it and stare blankly at the security personnel when they ask you to remove x, y, z.
So yet an other queue or delay.
The when all your gubbings has been scanned everyone just stands there check their mobile phones for a message and put their belts back on. In a typical “walking out of a store stopping right in the door way” style.
Yet an other queue or delay.
And then at some airport you have the added bonus of having your shoes double checked.
Way too much hassle compared to the old days.
And then airport aren’t helping either, the trick of taking an empty bottle with you is not really worth it anymore. Because some airports only have hot/warm water in the toilets now so unless you don’t mind drinking luke warm water, that trick if saving a few bob ain’t working anymore.
If the reason for this is it cost them too much in water I would like to see how this weigh up against heating all that water.
What set off this rant was my resent trip to Denmark on Cimber, Sterling or what ever they are called now air. You should think that being a Scandinavian air liner they would know the size of most of their clientèle e.g. taller than the Mr Adv. Joe. Even on Easy and Ryan you got more space for your legs. Though we did get a glass of water (or tea or coffee) and a bit of chocolate for free 😉 Which is not something you would get on other no trills air lines.
Oh since I’m on a roll let’s throw this in, “please turn off you electronic equipment before take off”. First of all this rule was made years ago before bluetooth and wifi which is pretty much within any equipment now of days. I need to find that website where it was explained even better.
And on the return flight I had some tunes going and was not asked to turn the mp3 player off before take off, but to take one of my ear phone out of my ears, eh?