UK airport madness

They managed to stop a terrorist attack, but are not allowing hand luggage on flights. Boy am I glad that I’m not supposed to fly anywhere over the next few weeks.

I had a nightmare experience at Heathrow a few weeks ago. I was boarding a flight in Heathrow, scheduled to take off 7:30. I’ve been to Heathrow before, but not recently, so I was spoilt by the smooth Gatwick experience and showed up at around 6:15.

It was a zoo. There was literally almost no room to move around with your suitcase, since it was all full of queueing people about to miss their flights and everybody was very nervous. I stood in a supposedly right queue but it didn’t really advance. The display indicated that I should speak to staff if there was less than 40 minutes remaining to my flight, which I did, and was shown to a late check-in counter. They saw that the flight was already “closed”, which sounded spooky, but in practice it meant that I had to take my stuff (including this HUMONGOUS suitcase I have) through the carry-on security. I wonder how this would have mixed with the “no hand luggage” policy… probably I would have just missed my flight. But since there was no attack yet then, I could carry everything all the way to the gate where they still put it onboard the plane and I made it in one piece.

I almost had a heart attack as they found some sharp stuff in my suitcase which would have been fine if they had checked it in previously, but it now suddenly became almost carry-on luggage… but since it wasn’t really terrorist-grade stuff, they just took it away and let me go. Otherwise I would have been in deep deep shite. I’ve had sharp stuff found from my carry-on luggage before (which was left there totally unwillingly and not on purpose, but that’s not really an excuse) and don’t recommend the experience to anyone.

The packing guidelines actually look pretty reasonable. You don’t really need any of this junk onboard anyway — as long as they let me keep my wallet, passport and tickets and won’t lose my bags, I’m fine. The only item I’m worried about is chewing gum, since that isn’t in the “allowed items” list. Through some perverse thinking, you could actually qualify chewing gum as “chemical” which could produce some strange results when mixed with some other liquid. Maybe they saw the “Diet Coke vs Mentos” videos when they made these rules… Or maybe Diet Coke vs Mentos was the plot in the first place?