Airport Chaos - "Explosives Control, Madame!" | Cicero Online

It's a question that regularly has me cracking up in line at security. "Do you have any liquids in your hand luggage?" Containers with liquids are only allowed in a sealable plastic bag in your hand luggage, and only up to a volume of 100 milliliters. Experts doubt whether this makes sense. I've given up trying to understand. I just stick to it, if only to avoid further delays in the process. But not everyone does that. And that can have consequences. It can result in an entire terminal being locked. million damage. 330 canceled flights. Passengers who are stranded at the airport and have to spend the night there. You don't want to believe that?

Well, that's exactly what happened in Munich recently. A 40-year-old passenger was caught trying to take liquids in a cosmetics case onto the plane. She subsequently checked in the cosmetics case as luggage. She then had to go through security again. This time the staff forgot to check them again. Someone noticed the mistake. big alarm. The whole terminal has been locked down. Small glitch, big effect.

Everything has to go!

No, it's no longer fun to travel by plane. And it's not just because of safety regulations. They are not so easy to understand because they are interpreted differently from country to country and from airport to airport. How strictly passengers are checked depends on many factors. For example, how well the security guards are trained and how well they are paid. In Berlin-Schoenefeld, where I am checked, the controls are relatively lax compared to those in Frankfurt am Main. But that fits the overall impression. Whoever lands here for the first time suffers a culture shock. "SXF" is a provisional made of corrugated iron containers. "Only the airport in Ouagadougou is worse," a friend from Africa once said.

Long lines. Understaffed check-in counters. Stressed staff. Annoyed travelers. A toddler throwing himself on the floor in anger and exhaustion. I have all my sympathy. Who wouldn't want to join in?

And when you think that everything is over now, the confinement, the heat, the noise, the waiting in front of the security check starts all over again. Smartphones in the box, take off your sunglasses, pull your belt out of your pants with a bang. Did you forget anything? The head? No, it's sitting where it's supposed to be. But there is still a key in the trouser pocket. Unpacking. Everything must Go!

Paranoia after 9/11

But why is the security detector still beeping? strip search. Not nice, but inevitable. It's for our own safety, you tell yourself. And with the hand grip of a karate fighter, the security woman also gives the security woman an insight into his patient file. He tells about the ten-centimetre-long screw that has stuck in his lower leg since a serious accident that broke his leg. A look that x-rays me from head to toe. "Please take off your shoes!" Now I'm getting angry.

So far I only knew something like this from the USA. The paranoia after the attack on the World Trade Center. The fear that every passenger might bring in evil, if not in the form of a bomb then at least in the form of an insidious stomach and intestinal flu virus. Bad-tempered security guards who interrogate passengers as if they were potential terrorists and take away anyone who complains about the audio or otherwise behaves suspiciously. You want to turn back on the spot when you experience something like this. In 2017, the US government tightened the thumbscrews even more for air travelers. Since then, iPhones and tablets have also been checked individually.

The number of passengers has doubled since 2001

Things haven't gotten that far in Germany yet. But even longer waiting times due to such controls would hardly be reasonable for the passengers. The boom in low-cost airlines has meant that their numbers have more than doubled since 2001. It was 117.6 million last year. 322,000 passengers took to the air every calendar day. Mobility researcher Andreas Knie predicts that the queues at the counters will be even longer in the future. It's in the nature of things, he says, that control systems collapse under this mass onslaught at the slightest irregularity. Only the consumers themselves could solve the problems. Knie appeals to their environmental awareness: Ride more trains!

Maybe not such a bad alternative, I think, while I still have to stand my feet up for 20 minutes until departure because there aren't enough seats in the makeshift waiting hall. Berlin-Schoenefeld with almost 13 million passengers (2003: 1.7 million) is no exception. Airport infrastructure has not grown at the same rate as passenger numbers.

Ryanair's success comes at the expense of its employees

And the working conditions for airline employees have also become increasingly difficult. Ryanair employees pointed this out when they stopped work at Europe's airports for 24 hours last Friday - and that in the middle of the holiday season. 250 flights were canceled in Germany alone. However, the expected protest from vacationers did not materialize. Surprisingly. According to a Forsa survey, 73 percent of Germans even expressed understanding for the demands of the low-cost airline union. Ryanair employees not only earn significantly less than their Lufthansa colleagues. They also have no collective agreement that regulates their rights. The group based in Ireland is doing splendidly. In 2017 he made a profit of 1.45 billion - twice as much as in the previous year. One can say: The airline's success comes at the expense of its employees. This seems to be slowly catching on in the minds of consumers. A ticket for a Ryanair flight costs an average of 39 euros. How much service, how much comfort can you expect in return?

And: Can more modern technology increase security? At the airport in Frankfurt am Main, the largest German airport with 64.5 million passengers a year, the police have been using more and more body scanners since 2017. They only need three seconds to X-ray travelers for weapons or explosives. But even this technology does not protect the listed operating company from breakdowns. At the beginning of August, the same thing happened there as at the end of July at the airport in Munich. In Terminal 1, a family of four from France got through the security area even though an explosives test in their luggage had returned positive – falsely, as it later turned out. Nevertheless, the police triggered the explosives alarm. 49 flights were canceled. 7000 passengers were stuck. Another million dollar loss.

Only raw mold cheese in the handbag

So what's the use of such security checks? Doesn't airport security satisfy needs that it created itself? Wouldn't it be more effective if the airlines sent armed flight attendants ("Sky Marshals") in civilian clothes, as Lufthansa already does on some flights based on the model of the Israeli El Al? I ask myself that while I'm at the airport in Toulouse waiting for my purse to go through the carry-on scanner for the return flight.

"Explosives control, Madame," says the security guard. "May I have a look in your handbag, please?" Before I can object, he has already spread the contents out on a table for everyone to see. There is no TNT, just a raw French cheese. But if I'm to believe the look on his face, it's almost the same.