Firetop

With the added security measures currently in place, Stansted airport was absolutely packed on Friday. We arrived two and a half hours before our Ryanair flight was scheduled to take off and were confronted with two very slow check-in operators and a ‘queue’ more than one hundred people strong. I say ‘queue’ but it was more of a rabble, this is because Italian’s do not know how to queue. Such a sweeping statement might seem absurd but it’s absolutely true, the majority of Italians seem incapable of taking in their surroundings to gauge how best to behave. When confronted with a queue it is seen as a hindrance, so most Italians go around it, until you have a wide circle of people instead of a nice orderly English queue. It’s not that they’re being deliberately rude - more that they just don’t comprehend queuing.

After an hour and a half at check-in we went to the departure lounge queue. Whilst there, somebody hopped in front of me, ‘not another Italian’ I thought, but I soon realised it was a woman crying her eyes out because check-in had been so slow that she had only five minutes to catch her flight. At Gatwick airport two weeks ago a similar situation simply meant that the security staff fast-tracked the unfortunates through the queue, but not at Stansted. Instead, the miserable old security lady at the head of the departures queue flatly refused to let her through, insisting she needed to queue for what was obviously going to be another forty-five minutes. This seemed absurd when the ‘business’ bag-scanning route was empty, staff standing idly and chatting. Even more absurd when as the woman finally got to the scanners forty five minutes later (resigned to the fact that she’d missed her flight), the business route started taking people from the back of the queue – almost as if it was a big game they all played.

The old lady in security was very insensitive; I’d go as far as to say almost racist in that anybody with an accent was made to put their hand luggage into the new smaller metal ‘bag size checking’ cage. If it didn’t fit you couldn’t take it with you. If you were foreign you definitely couldn’t take it – no flexibility there. I even saw her make a small child put his large cuddly tiger toy in there to see if it fitted OK. It wasn’t much better in the queue elsewhere. A very rude security staff member told the man behind me he couldn’t take his guitar. “No instrumentsâ€? she said in her best Polish-English, “But I checked with the woman at check in and she said it was fineâ€? he replied. “Well I’m telling you it’s not, so go back and check it in.â€? she said. He probably missed his flight too.

I don’t understand why Stansted airport are having such difficulty with the security measures when at Gatwick they are quite the opposite. Friendly people walking around apologising for all the inconvenience and treating passengers like people rather than animals. No wonder Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary is annoyed and suing the government for £3 million compensation. “We’re still dealing with farcical Keystone Kops-like security measures which add nothing whatsoever to security; are completely ineffectual in terms of improving or adding to security, and are just serving to block up the airports.” He’s right and needs to move Ryanair to Gatwick instead.

Bookmark to: