Wednesday, January 12, 2005

A lesson in security studies: Frankfurt airport January 2005

The best part when you are stuck at an airport for a couple of hours and you don't feel like reading a book or eating the silly nuts at the lounge is guess what ? shopping yay :)
Well I was looking for some interesting shopping some days ago to pass the time and maybe get a few good deals ( you never know with duty free). Shopping I thought was a pretty inoffensive activity. But it seems not anymore, I was surprised that all travellers were prevented from going into section B of the airport for a restricted amout of time. Why do you think? easy , because the frontiers of the United States fight against 'terror' (the new buzz word) has moved to European airports and the restriction of the freedom of other travellers. Yes, actually because there was a flight to the US in section B it has been cordoned off and passengers were prevented from approaching that area. Now if you happen to have a flight departing from one of the gates in that area expect to be asked to come back after the US flight has taken off , unless your plane was leaving more or less at the same time, then it 's another story. However, I did not see any other signs for flights in that section all gates were empty except the flight to the US. Cool those passenger had almost quarter of the airport to themselves . I wonder how much the airport is loosing in sales in that section ?
It must be a terrible pressure that because the US had done a lax job of guarding its own airports it expext EU allies to do the job for her and everybody else to be inconvenienced. But then hey that's a very good security procedure .

1 comment:

AK said...

Libyan

sounds like that airport was badly designed probably due to oversensitive security officials. reminds me of perth airport in austrailia, when went in there all the shops were shut and this was 8pm????, also when I got there had my entire luggauge contents searched and was questioned as they thought I was a drug dealer????.

as for airport shopping the best place I would recommend is dubai airport, area is excellent for gifts and I managed to get stuff there that could not in austrailia as it was a stop off point

alan