Flying - no longer a fast way of travelling
Join the queue and prepare to run your legs off
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By Johanna Korhonen
Mixed-up, confused thoughts whirl around in my head. The line to the security check at London Stansted on Monday evening is hundreds of metres long and several metres wide. The queue does not appear to be moving an inch, even though the clock ticks on and it is now precisely half an hour until our flight is scheduled to take off.
I repeat a number of known knowns aloud: yes, we were at the check-in desk on time, in fact we were among the first in line. Yes, way behind us somewhere in this meandering queue there are other people who are also headed for the same flight to Tampere.
There is no way, surely, that this airport can operate like this, such that we are all late for our flight because of the slowness of the security inspection!
At the same time the suspicion thuds into my mind that perhaps, yes, this is precisely what is happening.
More scrambled thoughts: how do we fix up a night at an airport hotel? Who is going to pay for it and for a new flight? How am I going to cancel the meetings I've got lined up in Helsinki tomorrow? Where am I going to get some soy milk for the kids?
Jumping the queue is forbidden on principle and nigh on impossible in practice, but dozens and dozens try it. Some even get away with it.
One woman is yelling at the top of her voice about important appointments, an elderly gent from Southern Europe seems to be bordering on having a coronary right there and then. The staff call two armed police officers - not to help the old man, but to preserve order among the increasingly restive queuers.
The scheduled departure time of Ryanair's flight to Tampere comes and goes.
The queue, meanwhile, goes nowhere. The perspiration level rises.
Conversations go on in several different languages over whether it is now beyond all possibility to make the plane.
Someone remembers to thank George W. Bush and Tony Blair: this is the war on terror at its finest!
The snaking line of several hundred metres in the airport terminal leads to just one security checkpoint, where around five officials are at work.
Their nerves have been well shredded hours ago.
The security staff are no longer searching for guns or explosives, but for metal objects, tubes of hand cream for people with atopic dermatitis, and soy milk powder for infant feeding bottles.
When - after more than an hour and a half of standing in line - we finally make it to the security inspection area, we are found to have any amount of metal about our persons.
It is there in the zips of cardigans, in key rings, and even in the staples holding together a Bob the Builder magazine.
An irritable uniformed man flicks through the Bob the Builder mag with an undisguised expression of triumph: Found it!
He does not disclose how one is to go about hijacking an aircraft with two staples.
When a small soft stuffed pig has gone through the X-ray machine, has been run over with a hand-held metal detector, and then squeezed roughly in the stomach a couple of times, we are fit to go on.
A few other Finnish-speaking passengers, with whom we presumably share the same flight or non-flight to Tampere, have gone by us while the stuffed piglet was being subjected to the third degree.
We break into a run, with baby's stroller out in front. And when I say a run, I do not mean a gentle trot, but a flat-out sprint that sends the lactate concentration soaring.
As we flash past Gate 40, we hear the tannoy announcement: "Last Call, Gate 53". Wow! The plane is still there!
Over the last couple of hundred metres, the dripping sweat starts to blur vision, as we career along corridors, down flights of stairs, and up and down escalators.
We make it. Gate 53 closes behind us.
Seven passengers - and they, too, were at check-in on time - are left in the queue from hell or dashing vainly down the corridors of the departure lounge.
The removal of their luggage from the aircraft hold takes a few more minutes before we can taxi for take-off.
As we reach the runway, my heart is still pounding like a bass drum. This war on passengers - it really takes it out of you.
P.S. Who provides compensation if a passenger who arrives at the airport in good time for check-in does not get on the flight, owing to the time taken to get through security?
According to the consumer authorities, not necessarily anyone.
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 18.11.2006
Helsingin Sanomat
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| 21.11.2006 - THIS WEEK |
 Flying - no longer a fast way of travelling |
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