A terminal case
Even a seasoned traveller can find the airport a frazzle-some place
A S one of those grandparents forfeiting my pension to visit my widely scattered offspring, I am a seasoned traveller. And I take pride in my ability to lug anything anywhere.
sewing machine, a violin, a child’s antique chair, a garden gnome … it used to be fun. But the net is tightening. Airline officialdom is now all about weight, so the first step is the home scale.
Tip: Get a strong person to heft the bag and stand on the scale, while you lie on the floor to get a reading. Remove some items, repack the bag, repeat scale procedure until you’re roughly at the allowed weight.
Upon arriving at the airport, choose a kindly-looking baggage clerk. Limp forward with your best dithery smile and pray no beady-eyed security person leaps out of the woodwork.
Hurdle one: Auckland Airport specialises in grim, blond, middle-aged, zipper-lipped security clones, from whom all the milk of human kindness has been sucked.
Before I reached my chosen clerk, a clone (see above) dragged me to the scales.
“You’re 4kg overweight! Pay NZ$200 (roughly R1 800!) or choose what to ditch.”
As a seasoned traveller, I headed for the haven of the disabled loo to swap my comfy travelling clothes for heavy jeans, boots and a jacket. It wasn’t enough. I sat on the floor, surrounded by my worldly goods, at one with a Chinese family doing the same thing — only their case was full of food. Undies versus tins provided a bit of comic relief.
Hurdle two: Auckland Airport has a second weigh-in for hand-luggage, so don’t even try re-shuffling. (Thank goodness I’d crammed my 2kg of
The smugly seated passengers could at least have clapped
Whittaker’s Chocolate — New Zealand’s best-kept secret — into my handbag).
Hurdle three was the scanner. You have to shove your passport face-down into its maw to get another security ticket. Mine didn’t oblige.
Hurdle four: the starting gates. When I tried to open them by sliding my boarding pass into a waiting slot, it didn’t fit.
I cantered back to hurdle three, where I had my passport re-scanned. Back at hurdle four, I popped on my reading glasses to interpret the “smile/don’t smile” instructions. Check Point Charlie flashed a heart-stopping notice, “Access Denied”.
I galloped desperately back to hurdle three, where an official peered at my passport, frowned and asked, “Do you usually wear glasses?” “No, I popped on my readers to decipher directions.”
Tip: Make sure you look exactly like your passport photograph.
Hurdle five: The never-ending queue for the X-ray machine.
It’s at this point, I heard: “Last call for passenger …”.
Adrenaline can galvanise creaking joints to scramble under ropes and elbow a path through any queue. It enables you to undress and fling laptops and cellphones into trays at eye-blurring speed. This wonder hormone can even keep you at a gallop for the final lap to the remotest boarding gate. The smugly seated passengers could at least have clapped as I fell into my seat. Sydney Airport also had it in for me. A seasoned traveller’s first stop is the loo. As I sat down, the automatic flush gushed as if endeavouring to sweep me down the S-bend into the Parramatta River. A sign saying the water was recycled gave cold comfort.
In the main thoroughfare, I couldn’t find my flight on the boards. An official told me Gate 63. Got there, read my book a bit. Realisation dawned — the throng did not look like South African passengers. Wrong information all round! After another marathon, with officials phoning ahead, I just made the flight.
On the other side of the world, fate smiled at me. At Oliver Tambo, my faithful case, having nearly been hauled off the plane not once but twice, was the first to flip onto the carousel.
Home, sweet home.