"my words of wisdom"
are not mine, if you read my posts I am purely relaying on stories from my girlfriend. Pick apart those situations as much as you like, the point is travelling as flight crew or travelling as a passenger, you need to feel secure. It seems the louder a passenger shouts, the more likely that they will get away with anything. I know there are a couple of extra security stages after check in, but thats not an excuse to be lax at the first one.
After all, we have all heard stories how people have actually boarded aircraft with the incorrect ID, and don't actually have the legal right to fly (on bail, no passport etc)
If my girlfriends actions were incorrect, she would not have been told "just let this one go through I'll put my name against it" by the supervisor. Everytime a reasonable size excess baggage is waived you are essentially cutting the company's profits (the company that pays your mortgage).
As I've said Im not trying to have a go at anyone, Im trying to understand why these incidents happen, whats the point of having a weight limit if they get waived all the time? You only get charged if you are a reasonable person, not a big gob?
Numerous times my girlfriend and her colleagues have commented that they are made to look stupid when they follow procedure, only to have what they have correctly done over ruled.
SurelyNot you are missing the point. She is competant, and explains why they have to either change the weights amongst the bags, or pay excess, but the usual comments are "this doesnt happen when I fly BA, I want to speak to a supervisor"
This is normally followed by "Im never using your airline again, this is ridiculous, Im going to write to the paper" (and occasionally they claim they are a journalist, if all claims made are believed to be true there would be millions of them!).
At this point supervisor turns up and bends over backwards to please this arrogant fool, to avoid a scene.