I have had cause to complain about Luton security once before but a recent incident takes the prize.
By coincidence, friends of ours, who are quiet, refined, and far from being troublemakers, were in an adjacent check in queue for the same flight (the Orange airline) as ourselves. Their check in agent rudely told them that their cabin bag looked too big and asked them to fit in into the rack. It was fractionally too big and they removed an item from it. Our check in agent did not even look at our cabin bags, so there is no consistency here, just a total lack of professionalism, or simply nastiness on the part of the other check in agent.
End of story? You'd think so, but no.
A few minutes later we were all standing chatting on the other side of the check in area, nowhere near the desks, and the (nasty) agent came over to us and demanded our names and addresses. When I asked why, she said : "Because we we have seen you talking to these people", rudely pointing at the other couple. I asked her since when was that a problem and why it gave her the right to ask for our details. "I'm not having people swapping luggage over so that they don't have to pay for it" was the answer. I told her that under no circumstances was she getting our names (particularly as one of the party was not even travelling) to which she replied that if I got 'gobby' she'd call the security. I told her to do so, even to call the police if she wished. I was not rude or abusive, but I was undoubtedly obnoxious and sarcastic, which under the circumstances was probably justified.
A security supervisor was called after we were tracked, presumably on CCTV, to another area of the airport. He refused to speak or listen to me and took the other couple aside and apologised to them for the airline's bad handling of the incident. He wished to tell them, but not in front of me, that they had not been 'picked on' because they were not 'white'.
Britain moves closer every day to being a totally repressive police state, with petty officials who have no manners and no training in dealing with the public, exceeding their powers and being backed up by the authorities. Madness. Of course, it's not unique to Luton.
Last edited by Capetonian; 3rd Nov 2009 at 23:50.