Just back from a trip halfway around the globe, which included transatlantic flights, short local hops and even travel in military helicopters. Along the way, I discovered that worldwide airline security procedures have quietly changed since I followed a similar route a year ago.
No longer are airports concerned about the perilous threat of toothpaste and the insidious dangers of shampoos. Entirely gone in every corner of the world, as far as I could see, is the obligation to place life-threatening liquids like nose drops in one-quart Ziplock bags … or woe betide you! I remember my month-long search last year to find somebody here in Guadalajara with a one-quart bag, after discovering that Mexican supermarkets only sell two sizes, one too small and one too big for this regulation.
I am now happy to report that my toothpaste is back in my toiletry kit where it belongs.
Drinking water: half the world no longer cares whether you brought along a bottle of water or where you got it from. And shoes. Would you believe it? I travelled 34,000 miles and no one asked me to take off my non-metallic shoes to go through security – except in the United States, of course, apparently the only country in the world still worried about shoe bombers.
Please note that the blades were only half an inch long with tips so exaggeratedly rounded you couldn’t even call this a pointed object. I explained my case to the guard:
“This special scissors for airports. Very small,” I told him in pidgin English, the lingua franca of Saudi Arabia.
“You go Frankfurt,” replied the guard. “Germans no want scissors. Very strict.”
My puny toy scissors posed such a threat to Germany that they were not permitted aboard this airplane and now I was hefting a big, heavy metal table knife – a product of fine German craftsmanship – with a no-fooling serrated edge which could surely slice through something tougher than black bread or Wiener Schnitzel … and hundreds of other passengers on board were doing the same.
For me, the scissors and the table knife are symbols of old and new outlooks on international air security. The post-9/11 approach required the public to undergo extreme security procedures to assure the masses that their governments were reliable, alert and protecting them from all dangers: “Remove your belts!
Take off your shoes! Throw away your Gatorade! We have studied the enemy and these (highly annoying) security measures will foil his nefarious plots.”
Fair enough. But 9/11 is behind us and anyone who has read a thriller or two knows that real terrorists, secret agents, SEALs or whatever, can easily kill with nothing more than a pencil, a credit card or even his or her bare fingers, so most countries of the world have realized that shoes, belts and toothpaste don’t really pose much a of a threat.
As a result, air travel has gone from traumatic to tolerably pleasant in many countries of the world. To my surprise, the most enjoyable airport of all turned out to be Saudi Arabia’s King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh. In preparation for my return to Mexico, I deliberately arrived at the airport four hours before my flight, expecting I would have to elbow my way through roomfuls of sweating men clutching handfuls of passports, only to discover again and again that I had been standing in the wrong line (“swarm” might be a more accurate word). Yes, that’s what air travel was like in many parts of the Middle East a few years ago.
Instead, the amount of time that passed from the moment I walked into the terminal until I was sitting in front of my gate sipping a Starbucks hot chocolate, totaled a mere 20 minutes.
An entirely different scene awaited me at airport security in Houston: The crowds, the noise, the fuss, the shouting: Shoes off! Laptops out! If you have any honey, do this, if you have cosmetics, do that! All I can say is I agree with an old lady who walked up to that scene of mass irritation and turned to her friend:
“Why do I have to go through this?” she asked quietly. “I traveled all over Europe and they don’t have to do any of this!”
Hey, lady, next time head for Riyadh.