Passing through Heathrow on Monday evening (at a non busy time), I was surprised to discover that the highly trained and alert BAA security operatives cannot, apparently, discern the difference between male and female pax.
I know this, because I realised that my boarding pass stub was in the name GUITERREZ/RMRS when I was walking down the air bridge to board.
Airbridge? you ask, what about the gate personnel.
Well apparently they can't tell the difference either.
But their IT system can.
When I returned to the front desk (which I thought was the only sensible course of action), the check in supervisor didn't apparently understand why I came back and was quite stroppy with me.
Once I explained, using very simple words, that my passport and boarding pass were for people with different names and sex, she eventually became quite worried.
On scrutinising the system, she then helpfully informed me that I was denied boarding at 20:08
, because the record on their computer said I had a duplicate boarding pass - so there.
At this stage, the dispatcher arrived and confirmed that Mr F3G had in fact been allowed through the gate and returned.
Very helpfully, both then switched to their native language to have a serious argument about which of them was the biggest buffoon. As I speak their language, I found this quite amusing, if somewhat rude. At several points in the conversation, they were argung about why the computer system had caused the security breach because a warning buzzer did not sound. It seems that this buzzer failed and the agent didn't see the screen flashing a red warning message. This brought to mind the "smart systems, dumb operative" failure mode, what happened to cross checking the name on the boarding pass and the passport?
I went along with this joke, until they had finished, then thanked them for the new boarding pass and informed them that their converation had confirmed a systemic failure in security and that I would be taking reporting action. They did not seem to find that amusing for some reason.
FYI, I was not late arriving at the gate and the flight was far from full, so pressure to process pax quicklywould not seem to tbe a factor.
In conclusion, I believe
1 - security arrangements that cannot tell the difference between a male and female are ineffective
2 - the arrogant airline ground staff, who posted on another thread that pax have no common sense, should start converting their glasshouse into a brick one
3 - if pax transgress, we get hammered, patronized, lose some of our possessions or are made to check in valuables despite this invalidating insurance cover, but if the security or airline staff screw up it is shrugged off - this is not acceptable