Aircraft security tightened: toy plane alarms border guards in Zurich
12.10.05 @ 04:17 PM PDT [link]

Phil's observations on life: 001 Airport Security Checks
I travelled to Southern Germany recently (see my blog on englishtalk at www.108thstreet.co.uk) and spent rather a lot of time passing through x-ray machines and baggage checks at Heathrow, Zurich and Stuttgart airports. Standing in a Swiss security queue when you're about to miss your connection is quite a stressful experience, believe me. I phoned my host in Stuttgart to explain that everything was about to go Pete Tong and to warn him that I might not make it to Germany that night. We discussed the option of my barging to the front of the line and stating that I was a particularly important English copywriter who simply had to be given priority. With my limited knowledge of German and my even more limited understanding of the Swiss variety, I rated my chances of success as somewhere between 1.7% and 2.4%. Having left the queue, I also guessed that I'd be unlikely to re-enter it in the same place. I therefore waited impatiently on one side of the machines and ran like a madman on the other. The plane had gone and I quickly became one of those ludicrously annoying stragglers who are shuttled across the Tarmac on a bus. By the time you arrive in situations like this, people are cursing you. Who is this idiot? Why wasn't he here earlier? "It was the plane from London," you want to say. "Delayed. We were taxiing around Heathrow for three quarters of an hour before we took off. It WASN'T MY FAULT!! Stop looking at me like that!" But you don't actually say it. You just look sheepish and shuffle towards the back.

On the way home from Germany, I put my jacket and coat through the conveyor-belt x-ray tunnel and walked through the pedestrian gate without a bleep. I was still pulled to one side by a cop who insisted on going through the irradiated suit and mac. "You have coins in the pockets?" he asked. Well, obviously I had coins in the pockets. If I'd kept them on my person, I would have bleeped when I went through the barrier. He started getting more and more frenetic and moved from the pocket of the coat to the pocket of the suit jacket and back again. "Ah," he said eventually. "You have too many coins perhaps?" By this stage, I was completely bewildered. Had I contravened some local law?

An English advertising executive was jailed for ten years today in Southern Germany for carrying too much loose change through an airport. When searched, Phil Woodford, 37, was found to have 18 euros on his person. Although this was within the permitted 20 euro limit, too many of the coins were found to be cents and small denominations.

On the same trip, a Swiss lady went through my bag and pulled out some toy aeroplanes that I'd bought for the kids. I started wondering whether there might be an obscure Swiss law that states it's an offence to take a small plane on a big plane. But thankfully she laughed and went to show them to her eagle-eyed colleague on the scanner who'd obviously mistaken them for parts of a rocket-propelled grenade launcher. Alles in ordnung.

Return to www.philwoodford.com



12.10.05 @ 04:07 PM PDT [link]