The Cosmopolitan Blog

In December, to get to my holiday destination, I spent over 30 continuous hours in various airports, each way. Considering the relative short distance (and the fact that we’re in the 21^st century), this was a very depressing fact…. all that to save $600 on the price of the fare.

I left before the attempted terrorist attack of December 25, 2009 (yes, the guy with the explosives in his underpants), so needless to say, airports, on my return, had become even more hectic, especially flights to, from and transiting through the US. Today, I am on my 3^rd airport. It’s been 1 security check and body search after another. And considering that my carry-on includes a laptop, an SLR camera and a purse full of “stuff”, and that on myself, I have jewellery and knee-high boots, I’m a security attendant’s worst nightmare.

As I stood in line for an hour and a half at Philadelphia immigration, I was reminded of a scene from The Godfather II. In the flashbacks, when young Vito Corleone first arrives on the ship from Sicily to Ellis Island in 1901, the immigration hall looked pretty much the same, people lining up for hours, tired and cranky. In those days, they’d just asked you your name and then checked your hair for lice. These days, there are many, many more questions, and the lice-checking has been replaced by full-body pat downs.

But now, this latest terrorist has just upped the ante, hasn’t he? I mean, look, I’m on my third body search of the day, and I can tell you one thing, if I had any explosives in my underpants, it’s not with politically-correct body searches like those that they were gonna find anything.

And here’s my final thought. The tighter the security, the more human the airport officials seemed to be. In Madrid this morning, after the usual security gates, we were treated to a 2^nd security check with every single piece of carry-on being opened and unpacked. And the agents, from an outside security company, seemed genuinely apologetic. They were kind, smiling, they helped you put the stuff back in. I was expecting them to apologize at any moment. And then in the aforementioned packed immigration hall, I believe it was the first time I saw MANY immigration officers smile and ask questions so nicely that I could have been at a hotel reception desk, while the attendants helped us pick the shortest line and helped passengers move their bags along.

Seeing airport officials display their humanity today, made me realize how much goes in to coordinating an airport. I am sitting at the gate waiting for my final flight, the plane has arrived, and I’m watching the baggage handlers, in the cold, manually taking the bags from the little van and placing them on the rack that goes into the plane. At the gate, it’s one agent and one engineer after another that logs into the computer to check info, coordinates with someone else on a walkie-talkie and walks off again. Everyone has a role to play.

If we think traveling through airports is inconvenient, I can’t even imagine what each airport employee goes through every day. With the added moral responsibility of knowing that any moment of inattention might be the moment they let the next terrorist through.

These days, everyone’s complaining about the extra security measures. Others are considering not entering the US for travel. I look around and see airports that work, all around the world, that do what they are supposed to do, and 99% of the time, that do it well. So next time you book a flight, make sure you get there early, leave AT LEAST 3 hours between connections, avoid wearing boots, take a deep breath and relax.