Heathrow after the threat -Published in the GDN (31Aug2006)

My husband and I were one of the few (un)lucky who had to travel two days after the threat made on the BA flights to the US.

The inconvenience started when we had to pack our mobile phones, cameras, ipods and other valuables into suitcases that were very likely to get lost. We also had to travel without travel essentials: travel sickness (not prescription) medicine, headrests, hand sanitizers and even books and magazines. I will not even go into the fashionable disadvantages of carrying your belongings in a ‘clear plastic bag’.

Although our flight was at 11:20 we left our hotel at 5:00am as we were told that there would likely be traffic jams as well as long queuing time for security checks that started even before entering the airport. Luckily, when we reached the airport at 5:40, security checks outside the airport had not yet started and only commenced about two hours of our arrival (we felt sorry looking out at the hundreds of people queuing outside the airport waiting to be thoroughly examined).

When we got to the airport people queued endlessly at check-in desks, passport control and even staff queued in front of the staff entrance. However, the airport was well prepared in terms of handing out clear bags, extra ‘help’ staff, organizing barriers and the awareness of travelers helped greatly.

Luckily for me, having the brilliant travel agent that I do (thanks again, Ruqaya), we found a brilliant business fair on one of the ‘less-popular’ airlines and decided to go for this ‘fancier’ option. Therefore instead of queuing in front of about 200 people we queued in front of two only to be told that we had to wait two more hours until we could check in.

After two hours of drinking more coffee than humanly possible, entering every single shop in the duty free, and roaming around aimlessly, our check in time arrived. Check-in was smooth (although about 3000 people in terminal 3 would disagree with me and probably beat me up if I had said that aloud) and traveling business’s benefits extended to getting an invitation to use the “fast track” at passport control.

“Fast Track” is not the term I would use, we had about 120 people in front of us and the process of going through passport control took more or less an hour. I did not show any sign of anger and was simply grateful that I was not in the line on the left (the regular one) because we literally could not see the end of that queue.

Our bare feet were happy to walk over, through the metal detector, to Mr and Ms Officer to manually search us then point us towards our shoes and clear, plastic bags.

The inconvenience, waste of time and trouble we went through does not come close to making us as angry as we were about “random checks”, yeah, right, “random checks” my foot, we got stopped three times to be asked questions only we got stopped to be asked simply because we had sun-kissed skin and a slightly larger nose, not very random now is it?

So there, my little adventure in Terminal 3 of Heathrow airport, but don’t expect me to buy this whole charade, liquid bombs in Pepsi bottles found in houses of 17 year olds who were later declared as “false suspects”. Was this a diversion extensive crimes in the world? Or was it simply a campaign to further market the false excuses of those crimes? I don’t buy it one bit, and as grandma would say “they lied the lie, then believed it”.