Mate says checking in "Smith . . going to Cairns ,. . . . but can you put my bag on your next Darwin plane please?" " Oh no sir . . that's not possible."
'Why not? You did it a few weeks ago."
My way of going through security and not meeting any harassment (and they get training in this in this country, believe me) is to keep eyes focused on the floor a few feet ahead, not to look up, never to make eye contact with them and be thinking placidly a million miles away. Eccentric? Maybe . . but not once in a hundred
trips have I been asked to submit to any form of search or extra scan or drug/explosive lint scrape. More than once recently my poor wife (with metal replacements in the knees and hips) has been subjected to most offensive and invasive feels up the crutch by these unfortunate, often butch type women the contractors employ. It is 99% farce, the whole horrendously expensive set-up.
Last week on a domestic flight while waiting to use the front dunny, the F/O came out, stood chatting to a hostie for a minute or two, making the whole business of the secure locked and impenetrable door yet another farce.
The squillions spent on airport security deflects attention away from the fact that there is in the end nothing that can stop the determined maniac
getting hold of say a light twin and doing the suicide bombing thing. That there has been no reported apprehension, let alone actual hijack or aircraft theft sort of incident in this country
for many many years says a lot about the nature of the risk but also how improbable it is that despite living in this nanny-state, paranoid world, anything really bad will happen.