Flying just got quicker and a whole lot scarier

LONDON’S Heathrow Airport is a great big, scary place to a platteland like me. It can hook up 133 airliners to those passenger “air-bridges” at any one time. It serves more than 80 airlines and handles 1 300 landings and take-offs a day. On an average day about 206 000 passengers pass through the airport, coming or going.

I was recently one of those 206 000. I felt very small.

What is more, I didn’t have a ticket or boarding pass. All I knew was that I was booked to fly to Johannesburg that day. My family, who are used to the wonders of the computer age, said: ”Don’t worry. You are booked. Just go to any check-in and they’ll sort you out.”

So I joined the 206 000 people and eventually told a busy check-in person I wanted to fly to South Africa, please.

“Just stick your passport in that slot,” she chirped casually, and I fumbled the precious document into a machine.

“It whirred and clicked and coughed out my boarding passes – one to OR Tambo and one from there to Cape Town International, as well as a sticky tag to attach to my suitcase. I am still gobsmacked. There must have been a quarter of a million people swirling around going to 80 countries, meeting friends, saying goodbye and sending their baggage halfway round the world, and all I had to do was show a machine my passport and it knew who I was and where I was going and which seat on which airline had been reserved for me.

One glance at my passport, and it even told me which gate I needed to go to and what time I would be required to board the plane.

That machine could probably have told me my shoes size and the names of my two cats if I had asked it.

And they tell us we should beware of identity theft! What chance have we of hiding our identity anywhere in the world? Who knows what other machines shared all the information the Healthrow computer gleaned from a brief glance at my passport?

Right now there are probably computers whispering to each other around the world: “SA citizen number XXX has been to Canada and Britain.

“Oh I see he went to Italy earlier, and to Germany in 2002. Let’s check on what he did there and what he bought.

“Beer? What brand did he buy? Let’s send his name to all the breweries in the world…”

I have already received an electronic questionnaire asking me how I rated my Heathrow experience.

I said it was pretty scary, and if they wanted to know, I like Guinness.

Last Laugh

A man went into a bar and ordered six glasses of whisky.

When they arrived he lined them up on the counter and started drinking. He finished the first glass, skipped the second, drank the third and then finished the fifth glass and prepared to leave.

“Hey,” said the barman, “you have left three glasses.”

“Yes, I know, “said the customer. “My doctor told me it would be all right if I just had the odd drink.”