The wailing

Today’s flight back from Lahore was the worst I’ve had for a long time.

The man next to me seemed to be suffering from chronic wind and the cabin was filled with kids wailing at the tops of their voices for the whole flight. Poor parents.

Getting into the airport was a pain too. The guard kept asking for my ticket and wouldn’t accept that I had an e-ticked with no print out. After some discussion he made me go to the airline counter outside to get a print out. I think he was being a bit officious – I’ve never had any problems getting into an airport in Pakistan by simply showing my passport and saying ‘e-ticket’.

Quite why a piece of paper with my schedule on it is needed is a mystery to me. It could easily be faked and defeats the entire purpose of having an e-ticket in the first place.

I also had my luggage thoroughly searched, including having the liners pulled out of the shoes in my luggage, even thought they were glued in. This is the third time I have been searched in Pakistan, which now rates first above the US for ‘random’ searches. They didn’t search the clothes or shoes I was wearing though, which again seems to defeat the purpose, particularly if it’s drugs that are being looked for.

I have no problems with security measures whatsoever, but they need to make sense and be consistent.

I am off to Las Vegas on Sunday for VMworld, flying via JFK. Hopefully my experience at JFK will be an improvement on January’s visit, where I was greeted by a pair of rude, incompetent, obese, grunting buffoons on exiting the aircraft, who treated everyone us all as if were convicted criminals.

I’m not a gambling man, but considering I will be flying back from Las Vegas, the odds are definitely in favour of another ‘random’ search as soon as whoever is managing the queue to the x-ray machines sees that my final destination is Dubai.

The joys of travel!

Advertisements