It’s all about access

What a difference a continent makes.

Leaving London’s Gatwick Airport on a Friday morning is more like entering a rugby scrum — Go Wales! — than going through a security screening. As one airport employee said, “Everyone in Britain likes to get away at the weekend.” The figures back her up — and they do like to get started early.

First, you’re pretty much on your own to find your airline check-in counter before you get a quart-size baggie thrust at you for any carry-on liquids and gels. Then, regardless of your airline’s baggage requirements, don’t even think of trying to get past the nice Irish lady checking boarding passes and the automatic ID camera if you’re carrying a purse in addition to one piece of hand-luggage. There’s a whole cadre of folks in safety-bright vests to get you sorted out on that fairly smartly.

Once in the security hall, you can more or less sort yourself into something that more or less resembles a line, where you may or may not have to get out your baggie, may or may not have to take off your shoes, may or may not get hand-wanded to prove your knees really are now made of titanium.

Screening complete, and the thinking behind “one piece of hand-luggage only” becomes crystal clear. There is, quite literally, a World of Duty Free items available for sale, and one carry-on leaves plenty of room for a shopping bag full of goodies for friends and family back home. They also sell, at fairly inflated process, replacements for the things they may or may not have made you chuck during the screening. As a fellow passenger remarked as he decided against spending 69p ($1.40) for a pint of water, “They’ve really got you by the short and curlies, don’t they?” Hasn’t put a dent in international visits, though.

On the other side of the pond, the atmosphere is decidedly more chilly, and I’m not talking about the St. Paddy’s Day Eve ice storm that made Newark Airport an even bigger nightmare than it usually is. Nice orderly lines, no talking, no crossing the red line in the carpet before it’s your turn to show your passport and customs paperwork, no stopping to tie your Reeboks, lady. Put someone with a full-on New Jersey attitude in a uniform and all the Welcome signs pledging courteous and respectful treatment on the planet aren’t going to make you do anything but keep your head down and get the hell out of there.

But of course you can’t, not until every bag is unloaded from your plane, and anyone with a connecting flight reclaims it, hands in their customs paperwork along with everyone leaving the airport, rechecks their bags and goes through the security screening again. In the hour we waited for our bags, along with folks arriving from Nepal, Beijing, Sao Paolo and other places where security may or may not be more stringent than Gatwick, I thought up at least six different ways this was providing more rather than fewer opportunities to game the prohibited items system. Maybe showing “Casino Royale” as the in-flight movie wasn’t such a good idea.

At least they didn’t make me declare the virus causing my raging head cold.

It’s still good to be home.

on Facebook on LinkedIn