Kelowna Airport has bad reputation

Dear Editor: I am a physician who travels across Canada and internationally, speaking to colleagues about prescribing appropriately for patients with mental illness.

I usually am asked to speak in Kelowna 34 times every year. Twice in the last month, while going through security at Kelowna Airport, I was subjected to a ridiculous search that had everything to do with abuse of power and nothing to do with security.

Today, I had three mascara, still in packages with a receipt, and the screener told me I had to take them out of the packaging and put them in my plastic bag or give them up or go out again and check my bag.

I had all of my liquids in my plastic bag (they dug through everything to check that) and all were under 100 millilitres.

There was room to put the mascara in the plastic bag, but they were sealed and they were for my daughter. They were adamant that I couldn’t take sealed mascara, apparently a liquid, on my flight.

“This is what we’re trained to do,” is the line they hide behind.

However, I have flown more than 150,000 miles in the last year and 1.5 million over the last 10 years and I have never been subjected to such a ridiculous, intrusive, inappropriate search, even in the Middle East, throughout Europe and across the U.S. I have the same bags, always packed with the same contents, that I take everywhere.

Kelowna Airport has a terrible reputation. When I mention what happened to me a month ago, Kelowna doctors I met this week nod knowingly and acknowledge the bizarre culture at security is giving the airport and Kelowna, apparently a hotbed of terrorist activity, a bad rep.

The screener today didn’t like my frustrated attitude and offered to show me how small the containers were that have brought flights down. When I pointed out that I have a Nexus card and the Canadian and U.S. governments don’t see me as a threat, he said, “No one else you’ve dealt with was doing their job.” If everyone received a screening like mine, no flight would ever get off the ground.

My only solace is that it’s all on video. They tore my bags apart because they were bored (seven people and I was the only person at screening) and they found absolutely nothing of concern, except the apparently threatening mascara. Perhaps they noticed that it can make the wearers eyes “pop.”

I went back to the agent, checked my regulation-sized carry-on, and returned to security. They then tore my second bag apart again, one they had just checked thoroughly 10 minutes before, looking for metal. There was no metal.

The people of Kelowna are friendly, the place is beautiful, but having that kind of experience every time I’m here (it’s happened every time I fly through Kelowna) isn’t worth it. I will not return.

When I complained about my April 1 experience, I received no response although they told the airport administration office they had spoken to me.

That did not happen. They have no intention of changing their behaviour to align with their peers in Vancouver, Toronto and just about everywhere else. By the way, today it was mascara and April 1 it was lip gloss that did me in. Dr. Diane McIntosh Vancouver