Originally Posted by
moral_low_ground
Have you ever been to Cairo airport (I am certain you have) ? TBH I couldn't give a F how many times they want to check the stupid stamp and 50% of the time the guy is not even there to check it and another 50% of the time doesn't even want to look at it. Therefore, the check is pointless.
In my last transit trip through Cairo the EK guy (eventually) picked me up in the transit area. He took me all the way back to checkin. The first security guard was eating his dinner with 2 cleaners so was no longer interested. The security office next to immigration was busy and the "Chief" couldn't be bothered to get out of his chair to check my credentials and just waved his hand.
So, pointless is exactly the word. If you don't have a security culture ingrained through the whole organization then it doesn't matter how hard one guy tries if the others let him down. I am sure CAI airport bucks itself up when the inspections happen but there is no consistent approach to security, white guys are treated differently to other creeds etc and if you believe that Cairo is a first world airport with first world security then maybe you shouldn't.
Things are indeed done differently in Egypt. But, generally speaking, things get done, things work. Of all those who have gone through the airport on money-saving, two-ticket connections we've heard an awful lot about inconvenience, a fair bit of huffing and puffing about the system, a measure of naivety - but so far everyone seems to have made it. Well, outside occasions where circumstances conspired to stymie well laid plans
Whatever security is in place in Cairo suits that environment, that culture.
Ad hoc profiling clearly takes place and partly addresses the rather ugly comment about "white guys". There you're looking at the vertical cut of caucasian rather than a series of assessments across race.
It's not the way things are done in Europe. Indeed, that type of profiling is anathema to our security services in the UK: but Cairo isn't the UK.