This happened to me while waiting for a SW flight, but it could have happened anywhere so I thought I'd post it here. Mods, move it to a more appropriate place as you see fit.

At the gate, husband off wandering, man sits down next to me. Says "Don't you think security is ridiculous?". I'm reading the newspaper, ignoring him. He repeats "Don't you think security is ridiculous?"...I say "sometimes". He says "Don't you think we should have a say in whether we're screened or not?". I don't want to answer, but it would have been more awkward not to, so I say "not really". He says "It's a Democracy, isn't it? Why shouldn't we get to choose whether we get screened or not"...I say "so the guys with the bombs can say 'I don't want to be screened'?". He says "well, I'm in the field, and most of the time I have my sidearm in my carry-on, and security doesn't even pick up on it".

Husband thankfully arrives at that moment and says "let's go get lunch" (has no idea what's going on)...I say I want to go find out how full our flight is, so go up to the GA and tell her what Mr. Nutjob said. I leave the area, come back later to find out she watched him for a while, watched a couple of people sit next to him then get up and leave. She then had security talk to him, conclusion was he was "harmless but an idiot".

Would you have told the GA or just walked away? Did I do the right thing?

Please continue to follow this thread in the TS/S Forum.
Thanks..
Obscure2k
TravelBuzz Moderator

You did the right thing. No doubt about it. Anyone that claims he has a gun is either off his rocker, completely ignorant of travel security, or up to no good. If it's the first two, he needs to be protected from himself. If the third, he needs to be asked if he wants some secondary screening.

There is a fourth possibility... he could be a Marshall that had a few too many drinks with the NW pilots.

Just walked away.

You always run the risk of being the next kneejerk idiot to cause a diversion or terminal dump by finding a non-threat, but this seems reasonable. His comment was pretty specific. As long as only the local PD is involved and not the TSA or FBI, things aren't as prone to stupidity.

Bet they all got along famously then.

Probably a BDO.

I swear to God it was not me.

It seems people in Namibia, with the possible exception of Mr. Nutjob, are pretty level-headed.

I'm curious to know which airport this occured at? Air Namibia has excellent security protocols for weapons because of the large number of hunters they transport, so I am surprised that someone would be complaining about their security.

It's a geek in-joke.

Southwest Airlines, commonly abbreviated to SW by non-geeks, has the airline code WN.
Air Namibia, which only �bergeeks have even heard of, has the code SW.

Geddit ?

In fact modern geeks know that Southwest now uses SWA and Air Namibia NMB, but there's no joke in that.

What do you do with a crazy person?

Give then a job with TSA.

That way they fit right in and don't feel different.

Air Namibia, formerly South West Air Transport, then South West Airways in South-West Africa.

Ring your call button and note to the flight attendant that the idiot next to you is talking about a firearm in his carryon. Let the po po deal with it. I do sometimes year people rambling about really stupid things in terms of security. I'm not sure how people can feel so strongly about something and not care to learn about it.

I probably would have left it at total nutcase and done nothing until they started saying they may be carrying a sidearm. I think you did the right thing by mentioning it to the gate agent.

Maybe the op was sitting next to SPIFF. I would've left as quickly as possible as I tend not to talk to anyone anyway.

If I was carrying, I sure as heck wouldn't be talking about it.

Stupid security, that's another matter.