Double Blind

Got to the airport at around 5:30pm; expecting a (US-bound) flight around 7:30pm, but it was posted delayed until 8:00pm. The airport was sparsely populated – the baggage check-in counter had zero lineup.

I was informed that my netbook would have to be taken out of my bag and that I should place the carrying case in my suitcase. Apparently if you are female you can carry a “small purse” and this indeed was the case. I am not sure what the difference between my netbook is compared to a girl having a small purse since the netbook would have fit into some of the purses I have seen women carrying. Nevertheless, you see people in the terminal holding their notebooks (some of them huge) and camera equipment.

Even funnier is that you see some people with bags and they are likely employees that are working in the kiosks. I have maintained that the security integrity of a flight also depends on the airport employees not being compromised.

It has been nearly a couple years since I have taken a US-bound flight and they have changed the terminal setup – they have put the check-in baggage security scanners first. Once you go through that, then you go into the next check-point where some guy scans your boarding pass and then asks you have many baggages you have. He then might show you a picture of your actual bag on the conveyor belt.

After this room, then there was the carry-on screen. You put your stuff on the plastic tray, and then they scan it. After going through the metal detector, there was a CATSA person that spent a good three minutes patting you down. He used both of his hands to check around my arms, carefully checking my shirt collar, patting the back and front of my body, patting all around my legs. Then he carefully checked my waist line, specifically the interface between my pant waist belt and my underwear – it was obvious he was checking for something in the elastic part of the underwear – his fingers were directly between my pants and underwear, and he circled that fairly thoroughly. After, he checked my upper groin area, and then got me to show him the soles of my feet (which were just covered with socks). Finally once again, he checked the back of my shirt collar. Having been satisfied that I was not carrying anything illicit in my pants or shirt, he let me go. I picked up my belongings and marched onto the US immigration.

Of specific note is that the new security procedure does not check the lower groin! It would be a very logical place to put a foreign substance there, but I am guessing that the bureaucrats decided that it (what would amount to a “crotch grab”) would constitute a search that would be too invasive.

The fellow at the US immigration didn’t even seem to look at my passport picture as he casually stamped the customs form and swiped my passport through his computer. He was telling jokes to his co-worker in an adjacent booth. There was no waiting time to get through the US immigration portion.

Upon emerging from the myriad of security and US immigration, I have discovered that my flight is another 45 minutes late, for reasons completely unrelated to airline security. However, all of this “check in 3 hours in advance” was complete mumbo-jumbo – I could have left the usual time in advance and still have plenty of time to make the flight.

There is no functional reason for having the carry-on ban. It is completely ridiculous. That said, however, the delays were not at all onerous (at this time of day I am guessing; in the afternoon and morning it is probably significantly worse) and you do get a free light massage in the process.

Thankfully YVR now has free wireless internet, which makes a delay tolerable. Before they had some TELUS implementation that charged an arm and a leg for access. Everything else at the airport still costs an arm and a leg, which is not surprising considering that the YVR airport authority probably charges the merchants a bazillion dollars in lease rates.

The other note is that having a netbook is great – it is so much easier to surf the web on it than a mobile device (e.g. IPhone), but it also has sufficient battery life to last through a really long flight delay (battery life on this is rated to about 8 hours and I realized I forgot to charge it – it was with 67% batteries which is still good for about 4 hours and 45 minutes). The charger is on the checked-in bag!

This entry was posted on Sunday, January 3rd, 2010 and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.