For tourists who want to board with a large handbag plus a fully-stuffed carry on and a tube of posters, however, it can be a nightmare to learn this at the last minute. The solution some airlines are adopting is to give passengers a large plastic bag into which they can place multiple items.

The man in line behind me at Heathrow grumbled that this contributes nothing to security (which I can well believe), and is solely intended to speed up scans, reduce the need to staff some scanners, and thereby save costs. However, I’m not sure it even accomplishes that. The many of us who carry laptops are ordered to take them out and put them into separate bins, which is harder to do and takes longer when your bag is stuffed tight with things you didn’t originally intend to put in there.

So I checked in online for my British Airways flight to Denver, but didn’t have an easy way (at my dad’s house) to print the boarding card. The site assured me that I could do this when I arrived at the airport.

When I got to Heathrow, several big and immediately obvious signs advised me that if I had checked in online but had NOT yet printed my ticket, I should proceed to a kiosk to do so. I was pleased at this rare example of clear instructions at an airport.

I went to the kiosk, punched in the number of my reservation, and got a screen saying: “You have already checked in.” And that was it – the kiosk returned to its original “check in here” state. I had seen no option to print a boarding pass, nor did the machine look as if it was going to do this on its own initiative. I tried again, and, even looking carefully, could not find any print option, though the screens were very clear and uncluttered. Fortunately, there was a lady standing behind the kiosks ready to help, so I asked her.

“If you’ve already checked in, go straight to the Bag Drop and they will print the boarding pass for you.”

…in flat contradiction of the instructions on great big signs all over the place!

Our port of entry into the US on this trip was Philadelphia. Once through immigration and customs, we had to change terminals and pass security again. The rules seem to be different in every airport (shoes off or on? computers in or out?), so I looked outside the security area for instructions. No sign, no taped announcement, but when we got right up to the barrier I could hear a guy on the other side of the metal detector, going hoarse saying over and over again: “Shoes off and in a box, laptops out and in a separate box, jackets off and in a box…”

I needed three boxes, which, along with my backpack, made 6 linear feet of stuff to put through the x-ray. I got all this lined up on the table, then realized that there was a gap and a cordon between the table and the x-ray machine – I had to pick up each item and move it over to the conveyor, while holding my ticket in view, and trying to grab another box for Ross’s belt that the metal detector didn’t like – we had to shout back down the line for someone to hand us a box, as other people piled up behind us.

Once on the other side, we had mininal space and time to reassemble our belongings. I said to the hoarse guy: “Do you mind a usability suggestion? How about putting a sign up telling people what to do? And connect the table to the conveyor belt so people can just slide their stuff through.” He looked at me, puzzled, then shrugged.

<sigh> I’m sure he’s sick of shouting the same thing over and over again for hours every day. I’m sure he and the other security agents know what’s needed to make this process easier for passengers and themselves – it’s staring them in the face all day. So why aren’t things better already? Clearly the staff at the gate have no power to make changes, and perhaps don’t feel they can even make suggestions. It’s possible that no one has ever listened to them – the experience of many low-level employees – so they see no point in wasting their breath.

It’s also possible that they just don’t give a damn. But I don’t want to believe that – I prefer to believe that everyone would like to make things better. Okay, maybe I’m hopelessly deluded…

I’ve flown a lot in my lifetime, both before and after the September 11th watershed. As everyone knows, airport security worldwide has been tightened since then, leading travellers in an increasingly Kafka-esque dance of “what do these guys want from me today?” The rules are unfathomable to begin with, are inconsistent from airport to airport (for reasons never clear to the public) and, at any given airport, are subject to change without warning or signage.

Problem

We approach every airport line with the same set of questions:

• shoes on or off? (I now routinely wear slip-on shoes when flying)
• laptop in or out?
• what about videocameras?
• jackets?
• how many bags am I allowed to put through the scanner? (at UK airports, only one – you may have to consolidate, but they didn’t tell you that when you boarded in another country, did they?)
• is my ticket supposed to be in my hand when I come through?

Many airports (I’m looking at you, any-Milan-airport) do not tell you before you get to the scanner what you’re supposed to do when you get there, so, after an unproductive (and possibly long) time standing in line, there’s a last-minute scramble to take laptops out and shoes off, put cellphones in, etc., at the behest of a bored guard who is going hoarse from saying it over and over.

In Bergamo the other day, Ross and I had both put our backpacks with laptops in them through the scanner before the guy watching the x-ray told us to take them out and put them through separately. The guard who had overseen us putting those bags into the loading end of the scanner had not mentioned the need to take laptops out (maybe it hadn’t occurred to her that women might be carrying laptops – I rarely see women travelling with computers in Italy).

Had there been a line of people behind us, there would have been quite a pile-up as we went back to get bins to put the laptops in and re-scan them (especially since there were only two bins of adequate size available). And after that the guy on the other end had us open them up and turn them on while he swabbed them as well!

Solution

Signs at the beginning and at intervals throughout the security line telling you exactly what’s expected, so you have time to prepare while you’re waiting.

Heathrow has TV screens with multimedia presentations, as well as printed signage, all along their (long, slow) security lines, so you know what’s supposed to be in and out of your bag well before you reach the end of the line. However, the newish rule that you can only scan one bag means that before you ever get into that line, you are stopped by a guard who tells you that you must consolidate your backpack-plus-purse (or whatever combination) into one package before he will let you into the (long, slow) actual security line.

This results in a milling crowd of people crouched on the floor sweating and swearing at their luggage, with the guard hovering menacingly, telling them unhelpfully to hurry up and clear the area. Then, trembling with stress and irritation, you find yourself spending 40 minutes crawling along the actual security line and wondering how you’re going to get your laptop out of your now-jampacked backpack, as the signs make clear that you will have to.

Why couldn’t the multimedia on the TV screens simply be updated to reflect the new one bag rule? I suspect that it’s a Flash presentation, probably done by some costly outside consulting firm, and no one considered when it was commissioned and created that it might need to be updated. (Frequently, at that.) The whole TV announcement screen system needs to be rethought and rebuilt for more flexibility and the ability to update quickly for rapidly-changing needs and situations.