I’ve often wondered why some airlines get security to check passports at the boarding gate and some don’t. Do those that do think we bluffed our way through immigration? Do they think that having got into the airport and therefore out of the country I’m going to sell my passport to some homeless person or criminal who resides in the airport and must also have bluffed their way in? Maybe some passports expire between checking in and boarding the flight although that’s a seriously long connection time.
So not only do some places make it difficult to leave (although I think multiple passport checks may have more to do with where you’re going rather than where you’ve been) I have actually seen people trying to negotiate their way into a country. I saw a family of Sikhs in animated discussion with an Indian immigration desk official one night – much arm waving, finger wagging and raising of voices on both sides. They were carrying non-Indian passports but had apparently overlooked the requirement to spend some money on an entry visa. How they got that far I’ll never know as the conclusion of the saga was played out in a room elsewhere in the airport. But as I was standing behind them in the queue I got chapter and verse of the first stage of the negotiation.
And a longer than normal trip through officialdom.
While on the subject of security, have you ever checked in, gone through immigration and customs, discovered you haven’t put a baggage tag on your hand-carry which must be stamped at the gate before you can board (very officious I know but such are the ways of some countries) and returned to get one? Remember, you have left the country once through immigration. I had occasion to do this once so walked back through customs and immigration to the check-in desk, got a baggage tag and walked back through immigration and customs completely unmolested. Unbelievable. I suspect things have tightened up a tad since then.
In a similar vein, a few years ago I worked for a large Brazilian company and so was required to visit head office in Rio de Janeiro occasionally. Now travelling in and out of South America is a challenge at the best of times and requires patience to accommodate long flight delays, agility when required to consider all available options and put together an alternative itinerary on the run and deep (corporate) pockets to take advantage of any of those available options.
I sat on the Rio tarmac (actually in the plane which was stationary on the tarmac) for about 4 hours once while the flight crew tried to get someone to fix the plane’s weather radar. It was late at night and no one came so I missed my connection in Buenos Aires and resigned myself to another night in Rio. The ground crew off-loaded us and escorted us through the dark and deserted terminal, back past the unoccupied immigration and customs desks and out to the front of the terminal where buses were arranged to take us to hotels. We, the passengers (and crew, I guess) had left the country earlier that day and were still officially outside the country when we came back in late that evening. Mañana.
You’d think in the circumstances that there would have been fairly stringent controls on our whereabouts and some rather definite arrangements for our return to the airport and escorting back out of the country. But no, not the case. Without some rather stern discussions with the desk clerk in our hotel (which was about as far away from the airport as it’s possible to be and still be in Rio city – western part of Barra if you know the place), resulting in some phone calls to the airline to remind them to send transportation for the 15 or so people from the flight in that hotel, we may have been there a bit longer.
We arrived back at the airport with not much time to spare but with no one to meet us so we approached the check-in counter and the clerk waved us through a gate which bypassed the formalities and we were back airside in no time. Easy as that. It’s harder to get through Mount Isa airport in outback Queensland.
So when I hear of airport security snafu’s, am I surprised? No, actually.