AIRPORT ENCOUNTERS

 Heathrow

I have flown in and out of England’s Heathrow Airport several times. Sometimes with no encounters, other times not so smoothly. No way is anything going to avoid the scanner there.

          On our way to Africa my son had a lot of camera equipment and no less than 100 rolls of film. After going through the general scanner, we were taken aside where an attendant proceeded to open every single canister of film, except for the couple dozen rolls still in a blister pack. Since the blister pack was intact and he’d found nothing in any of the canisters he let them go unopened. I suspect he was looking for drugs as this was in the mid ‘90s. Fortunately we had plenty of time to make our flight.

            On return a couple of weeks later I again faced security problems at Heathrow. I had bought a walking stick before leaving Nairobi. It was solid and had no openings in it. It scanned ok and in the days before the bins one now uses to empty your pockets etc, the scanner attendant insisted I empty my fannypac. It would have been so much easier to just run it through the scanner, but no!

            I don’t recall what I said to the fellow, but his reply was, “Madam, you either oblige or you don’t make your flight.”

            So I did as instructed. Time was tight. We gathered our things and headed off toward our gate.

            Suddenly I stopped short. In a panic I said, “I forgot to pick up the airline tickets. Stay here with the luggage while I run back to the scanner for them.”

            The tickets had been in my fannypac and I still don’t know how I missed picking them up. Strangely no one had seen them and they insisted I was mistaken. That made me wonder who was paying attention to what!

            At the British Air counter I explained to the agent what had happened. Earlier I had checked the tickets so I even knew what our seat numbers were.

            “Have you checked lost and found?” the agent asked.

            “No. I just went back to check at security.”

            “Come with me to the lost and found first.” Of course no one had turned in the tickets as only minutes had lapsed. More than likely someone behind us picked them up thinking they were theirs and would not discover the mistake until they were at their boarding gate.

             Back to the counter, the plane was boarding. However, everyone was very nice. After checking the computer and verifying our seats the attendant simply issued us new boarding passes.

            We were so lucky not to be assessed a penalty for new tickets! I have always been grateful for that.

            We were in a time crunch and that security fellow had me  rattled, but that is the only time, in my traveling career, I’ve ever lost airline tickets. But even luckier is the fact I only had the British Air tickets in hand. Our Delta tickets for our US flight the next day were safe in my passport necklace!