Mom spitting mad over airport toy ban
A five-year-old boy is heartbroken and still searching for his stuffed toy snake after security at Johannesburg’s OR Tambo International Airport told his parents he could not carry it on board as hand luggage.
“He keeps asking where it is and when we’re going to pick it up,” Freedom Under Law executive director Nicole Fritz said after her son’s toy was taken away.
“We said that it’s with the pilot and has gone on a trip.
“I thought it was a petty‚ mean-spirited‚ cruel exercise of discretion.
“What they were doing was exercising discretion – and the way that they did was to create heartache for a little boy.”
Fritz‚ her husband and two children had booked in for their flight to Cape Town and were in a long queue at about 8.30am on Saturday when her son took the toy out of his bag and put it around his neck.
“It’s not a rubber snake. It’s a soft toy,” she said.
“People were kind of laughing around him.
“Nobody thought for an instant it was real.”
When they reached the front of the queue‚ a security guard said they would either have to throw the toy away or check it into their luggage.
“We were just so taken aback. We couldn’t believe it,” Fritz said.
“We had been waiting in the queue for a long time.
“We had very little time to make it to the gate.”
Fritz asked which regulation forbade animal soft toys as hand luggage.
The guard then took her to the security office, where Fritz asked to see the regulation.
“She [guard] couldn’t show it to me and called someone on speakerphone‚ who told me that this was the case but‚ again‚ couldn’t tell me what the regulation was.”
Fritz said she would not have objected if the toy snake looked real.
“Nobody seeing it would think‚ ‘Oh my goodness’‚ even at a cursory glance.
“I was just so angered by that stage‚ I picked up the bag and said‚ ‘You’ll just have to arrest me’.”
A change of heart followed‚ however.
“I decided that I was not prepared to sacrifice my liberty in defence of soft toys everywhere,” she said.
A security guard then helped her bypass the queues and escorted her to Kulula’s
desk so she could check in the toy snake.
But check-in for the flight had already closed.
Fritz then asked a passenger who was flying to Cape Town on another flight if she would check the toy into her luggage‚ but she declined.
“I don’t know‚ perhaps they thought this would be drug smuggling or whatever.”
Left with no alternative‚ Fritz threw away the toy‚ which her mother had bought for her grandson.
“It was a special National Geographic toy that my mom had bought him for his fifth birthday last week.
“It’s not something that can be easily replaced.”
Her experience prompted the sharing of similar experiences on Twitter.
Werner Hefer posted that his six-year-old son had a rugby ball confiscated on an international flight.
Airports Company SA had not yet responded to requests for comment late on Monday.