13901

Quote cut for brevity.

Some people need to behave this way. It's a mystery to me as to why one would do it, for it doesn't seem to be helping them much, mustn't be good on their coronaries and it's not as if they enjoy it but... Still, they do. I had the (dis)pleasure of dealing with one such gentleman a while back, when that famous "squirrel" (I think it was some other kind of rodent) got fried inside T3's Integrated Baggage system, thus bringing down the T3-T5 tunnel and causing all sort of knock-on effects on T5. It was my monthly week of "on-hand" duty so I went over to the terminal to help the front of house, where I met this particular guy. He was travelling to Malaga, or Alicante, or some other Spanish seaside place where the UK exports retirees, and had a small rollaboard he wished to check-in. There were about 4hrs before his flight and I notified him that, due to the situation, we had a strict 2hr limit on checking bags.

I listened for about 15 minutes as he repeated that this wasn't good enough, and that he wanted to "browse the shops" and "enjoy supper" in the lounge. I think he repeated that the wished to browse the shops and enjoy supper a good dozen times. I can still see him in front of me, with his tiny rollaboard, v-neck jumper, beige shirt and pressed trousers. He had none of the reasons I gave him for the issue, just kept repeating that it wasn't good enough, and what I was going to do about it. I suggested the arrivals lounge (which had been opened on purpose), Carluccio's, the pub or if he wanted food poisoning I could've bought him the staff canteen curry. "Not good enough".

Eventually I had a brainwave and said that, since his bag was rather minuscule, if there wasn't anything that needed to be checked in, he could've gone through security straight away. "Not good enough". He wanted to make use of the "baggage valeting service" (duh?) included in the ticket he'd purchased. He stood there for two hours, in the departure concourse, waiting for the exact time to drop off his teeny tiny bag.

citiflyerUK

People not clearing their trays really annoys me and it always seems to be a bigger problem at fast track queues. I guess some people think they are too posh to stack.

Can I help you

I found the best way to deal with these types of people is to listen, never interrupt and wait for them to run out of steam, smile and give them my answer, listen again as they go on and on and give the same answer, eventually they realise I’m not going to budge.

OverTheHorizon

Mr OtH would like to apologise to those users of TFW who were delayed this morning by his having placed a powerbank and mobile together in a pocket of his carry-on, apparently necessitating a complete shutdown of the left-hand belt for at least 15 minutes while a manager was called to verify that the X-ray image did indeed resemble a powerbank plus mobile and the bag could thus be released for secondary search...

Anyway, DH reports that he remained calm throughout this rather silly episode, though a couple of nearby pots were close to boiling over

It seems the food & wine subsequently in the CCR were "nice enough" - I will leave it to him to provide a full report in due course...

HarryHolden68

This happened to me in TFW. Apparently, when viewed on the scanner, a zoom lens for a camera looks the same as a detonator. Everybody and their dog was called to look at the screen. What surprised me is that it took the staff a good 5 minutes to confer with me over what they could see allowing me to describe the lens. At this, I was permitted to open the bag for them to all breathe a sigh of relief. Lens now goes in my checked bag or taken out of the bag and placed in a separate tray..

It was all good natured and at no point was I made to feel like a terrorist. A great deal of apologising from the team leader, which was not required.

navylad

How can the two look the same on X-ray? One does have to wonder…

skipness1E

Used to get this a lot as I always travel with an Nikon DSLR and zoom lense.
Best practice through learning the hard way, is that anything electronic comes out and goes on a separate tray, that's Digital SLR Camera and 400mm lense, iPhone and anything else. Now they say you don't need to but I already have a separate tray for liquids so one tray obvious of "high risk of being secondary searched items" worked very well for me. It's not the items themseleves per se that's suspiscious, it's being in a bag packed has them out of context for the human operator, try and make is super easy for them IMHO and you'll be through in a flash, grab your second tray off the belt and repack at your leisure.

guytp

At LHR T5 back in 2013 and the early days of electronic cigarettes when most people hadn't seen them - I had an extremely large one in my bag and partly dismantled to take up less space. The lane was shut down for a few minutes with many people around the screen. It turned out that in this case my cigarette looked like a hand gun (rectangular tank for handle and long cylindrical battery for barrel) and once the bag was opened everyone was very relieved. As long as I used it after that I made sure it was separately out of my bag. Certainly my most eventful trip through security.

Akoz

I had something similar 3 or 4 years back at ABZ, when a few usb leads and a Tesco Coffee Madeira cake apparently resembles plastic explosives and a detonator.

beachmouse

The item that gets my bag pulled at many a US security checkpoint is Clif Bars. What I see as an emergency nutrition food apparently can look like a hunk of plastique explosive on the scanner.

Markie

https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-...ms/solid-foods

docdee

As a medical student I was going from BHD to LHR with a half skeleton in a brown box donated to me by a doctor friend (for my anatomy lessons of course). Now this was 1988 and BHD had much more tight security than most airports at the time but the scanners operator's face was a picture.

itsmeitisss

I've had security personnel at many German airports watch me take lenses out, and tell me to put them back in the bag, only for the guy at the end to then admonish me for not removing them. It's not a rare occurrence either. I've asked teh guy at the start are they sure, and get told, yes put them back in - taking them out takes more time.

Gastrocnemius

The staff there have clearly been on a training course at MAN...

Tdgraves

Must be a Nikon thing….never happened to me carrying three canon zooms in one carry on suitcase, which I do three times per year!