Today’s post even though is travel related, it’s not about a location but instead, about some things I have noticed during a couple of my last travels; to be more precise, during my trip to Milan and Lisbon.
Today we are talking about security; may seem a bit of a boring topic to talk about yet, I think it is by far one of the most important ones, especially if you are traveling by plane.
ID & Boarding pass check
I don’t know about you, but I am always amazed at how fast the preparation for boarding sometimes is; it almost looks like they (the personnel) does not even look at you while scanning your boarding pass and shout “next” to the guy/girl behind you in the boarding line.
It was on a very early Saturday morning that I took my flight to Milan, departing from Cologne. So early that it was hard to keep my eyes open, yet I could notice that the lady behind the counter, did not look at me in order to check if I was the person on the ID card and that it matched the passenger name on the boarding pass.
She literally scanned my pass (electronic…) and that was it. Next!
I could hardly believe it…
In my mind I had already a 1000 different scenarios planned out:
What if someone stole my phone and was using my boarding pass? She wouldn’t have noticed!
What if someone bought a ticket on my name but I wasn’t the person matching the photo on the ID card? She wouldn’t have noticed
What if my ID card did not match the name on boarding pass? She wouldn’t have noticed.
Nothing…
Was I the only one she did that? No; almost everyone I paid attention to, she did not cross-check the photo on the travel documents and boarding passes…
If this wasn’t enough shocking, I have two more things to mention.
Access to airport’s core
During my last trip to Lisbon, my flight departed from Eindhoven, in the Netherlands. It’s a relatively small airport, yet with a lot of passengers, and at times, it becomes super crowded.
At this airport, in particular, I noticed the following:
You can go from the departures hall all the way to the gate without anyone checking if you are the actual passenger.
I mean, NO ONE, checked.
They have these scanners for your boarding pass before you enter the security check (which I will point out next), but there are no employees there.
So, once again, all you need is some boarding pass and you can easily get to the airport core.
If you are a bad intentioned person, you can easily do some serious damage without being stopped…
I’ll just leave you to think about it; I guess the recent past has shown us how “easy” it is to do something with bad intentions.
This certainly doesn’t help!
Security Lines
No one can deny that security lines are perhaps the most annoying thing at an airport.
For me, what really pisses me off, to be very honest with you, is how there is no “one rule fits all” when it comes to how you have to pack/show your toiletries in your carry on.
In Eindhoven, again, the security people there, made me put all my stuff inside a 1L bag. Convinced they were that it wouldn’t fit, since I had, in their eyes, too big of a bag.
Little they knew that it was filled with travel sized products and that I had practice at home, just to make sure, that all my holy grail products would fit in one, and one only, bag! Take that, you assh*les!
But, in Lisbon for example, they are fine with whatever bag you take, as long as none of your products are above 100ml. They don’t even ask you to show it in advance. Just put your bag in the tray and move on. After all, they have an X-ray machine…
This is quite annoying, not to say stupid, that the rules are different in each airport (and I am only mentioning two European airports; I am sure that in other countries rules are different).
But what sense does that make?!… I can’t really understand.
You may think: Barbara, what kind of post is this?
Well, I had to put it all out! haha
And especially when it comes to safety in such busy places, it always amazes me how people have short-term memory…
As if the recent years’ events weren’t enough to remind us all, that no one is safe anywhere nor anytime.
Let me know in the comments sections what your thoughts are on the points I mentioned above and also if you have some personal experiences at airports that can make the whole travel process quite annoying.
Until the next post.
See you soon!
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0 Responses
E em Madrid? Uma festa! Em Lisboa tive que tirar botas, cinto,as coisas dos bolsos tudo… Em Madrid ia começar naquilo que chamo o meu strip de aeroporto e eles dizem que nao é preciso, nem as cenas dos bolsos tirei! E nao me faltava cenas de metal nos bolsos… Fiquei tipo " ok… Podia ter o que quisesse nos bolsos…" ah eram calças de bolsos ao lado, e vinham cheias de cenas e moedas e canetas e tudo lol