Airport chaos: Top complaints from security screening to bag delays

Whether you’re arriving or departing, there’s no avoiding the terminal and all the annoyances that go with it. Which one is your pet hate? TAKE OUR POLL

The distance between gates can seem interminable.

Whether you’re arriving or departing, there’s no avoiding the terminal and all the annoyances that come with it.

Security screening

Laptop out or in? Carry-on bag in a tray or simply on the conveyor belt? Shoes and belt on or off? Every airport has a different set of security-screening dos and don’ts, and you never know which you’re about to be subjected to. Security personnel, however, assume you have committed to memory all variations of the above for every single destination, so expect an eye roll – probably something more vitriolic at LAX – if you happen to get it wrong. British comedian Jake Lambert sums it up perfectly on Instagram with a skit in which he poses as the head of a security team plotting their latest tactics in their morning briefing. “Every seventh person has to take their laptop out – I love that … Just remember they are going on holiday so you need to be as needlessly mean as possible, OK? Give them hell.” PH

Should bags go in a tray or straight on the conveyor belt?

Explosives test

Ah, the explosives residue test so beloved by the staff at Australian international airports. You’ve had your bags cleared through the X-ray machine, stood with arms and legs outstretched in the sci-fi security capsule and (in my case) been asked intimate questions about your underwire brassiere (apparently I could go mad, remove the wire and use it as a shank), and now there is the possibility I am carrying a gun or have recently fired one so please step forward for a swab. I can only presume it’s my Spanish-Moorish genes that raise a swarthy terror alert as my Anglo-Celtic husband heads off merrily to the duty-free shops, pretending he doesn’t know me. SK

High costs

Retail operators and F&B providers at international airport terminals pay high rents so it’s understandable there are not many bargains to be had. I estimate up to triple the downtown cost. But souvenir shops selling stuff that’s not made within cooee of the destination really take the cake, and I don’t just mean a coin-sized pasteis de nata snack at Lisbon airport for the equivalent of $20. It pays to look closely at the country of manufacturing origin on labels and price tags. If it’s cheap or dressed up as “iconic”, it could actually be worthless. In Sydney T1 International, the “Think Sydney” shop is a good bet for classic Australiana, and ditto Australian Way on level 3 of Brisbane T1. More generally, no matter the destination, seek out local skincare (say, Sodashi in Australia; Shiseido in Japan) and don’t be tempted by bulky LEGO sets at Copenhagen airport. It’s probably cheaper at K-Mart back home than to buy at source and then cop excess baggage charges. SK

Water fountains

Hydration is key to beating jetlag on a long-haul flight, so travellers the world over now go to the airport armed with giant water bottles. They guzzle the contents before approaching security, or tip it into the bin – if there actually is one – but then go in search of a refill before boarding. Cue the queue to the water fountain, where every second person shows blithe disregard for the risk of influenza, Covid or the nasty norovirus and inserts the dispenser directly into the mouthpiece of their bottle. Yuk! PH

This is the correct way to refill a water bottle.

Dressing down

Comfort is everything when flying but can be taken to extremes en route to carefree holiday destinations such as Tropical North Queensland or Fiji. Why are there no stiff airline codes of apparel that would outlaw passengers displaying bum cracks in old shorts, wearing skimpy clothing and sporting T-shirts with offensive slogans, such as Collingwood AFL logos. Airports could employ roving fashion monitors to hand out something (anything) to improve the scenery. Such staff could also draw maps and escort lost passengers to their departure gate or other destination, because the signage at most terminals is so counterintuitive as to be useless. SK

At the loo

While many airports have upgraded their bathrooms, plenty still fail dismally in this field. Contortionist skills are required to manoeuvre baggage and body around the cubicle door, there’s no shelf to hold a personal bag and any hooks that did exist have snapped under the sheer weight of passengers’ self-serving carry-on ambitions. Sanitising seat spray? You’re dreaming. Toilet paper? You’ll be lucky. And please tell me that’s water on the floor. PH

Phone charging

We almost all carry a phone these days, so why are there so few points at which to charge them? We’re not talking about dodgy USB ports that may, but probably won’t, trigger that lovely green icon with the lightning bolt to appear; we want proper electrical outlets that juice up our device with speed. Not only does there tend to be a dearth of these, when you do find one that’s actually available, it’s invariably the plug intended for vacuuming the terminal. Hence you end up crouching on the floor waiting for your phone to replenish or plugging it in and watching like a hawk from a distant seat in case it goes walkabout. FH

Passengers insist on queueing up regardless of the order in which they are scheduled to board.

Before boarding

It’s 15 minutes until your flight starts boarding, and each passenger has a number indicating the order in which they’ll be expected to cross the flight bridge. But that doesn’t stop every wo/man and their bag queuing up in a bid to get in early and claim “their” space in the overhead bins. If the land crew don’t insist on travellers abiding by the numerical rules, that just exacerbates the increasingly fraught fight over carry-on storage. Can everyone just sit down, calm down and wait their turn? PH

Bio-security

On a flight two years ago from Santiago to Sydney via Auckland, NZ biosecurity officials were having a field day, as it were. Incoming passengers who were bound for Australia and therefore not intent on sullying NZ’s sacred soil, dutifully followed the transit lanes and imagined we’d have a bit of a leg-stretch before reboarding. But for unfathomable reasons, we were all searched (bodies and bags) for agricultural matter, seeds, pollen and other substances likely to plunge NZ’s biodiversity into total peril. It was a full 747 aircraft and the process required us to shuffle along, step into shallow pits that looked like sheep dips and even, in the case of the person queued in front of me, have Rastafarian knotted hair inspected for “organisms”. Then we were held in a basic lounge (no food; two toilets), and reboarded two hours later in our squelchy shoes. Go figure. I hope they found that rogue blade of grass. SK

The tarmac shuttle bus is a depressing sight for travellers.

Shuttle buses

Possibly the most disheartening sight in global travel: the tarmac shuttle bus. How dispiriting to step off a long, cramped flight and find this agent of torture waiting beside the plane to deliver you to the distant terminal. As airports grow into metropolises in their own right, the plane-to-terminal shuttle has become an all-too-frequent, unwelcome reminder that we have outgrown our airports. It’s bad enough to wait for everyone to disembark; then comes the wait while everyone boards the bus for the (sometimes short, sometimes very lengthy) drive to the terminal. Just another inconvenience nobody asked for. And don’t get me started on catching the shuttle to the plane — why bother paying for priority boarding when everyone is crammed onto the bus first and then allowed to board the plane in any order? EM

Join the queues

Departures are reasonably simple at most airports and Australia’s passport scanning technology is efficient and easy; arriving passengers are the ones likely to hold up queues and fumble about with their paperwork. It’s not that hard to get your stuff in order, surely? Most, if not all, international airlines hand out arrival and customs forms to passengers inflight and show a video outlining the procedures entailed when fronting up to immigration counters. But join that snaking line and it’s Sod’s Law that someone will have left it all to the very last second and is now crouched down with a pen that doesn’t work. Or needs to borrow a pen. Or can’t remember the name of their hotel or even if they have booked a hotel. This is understandable if you’ve flown from, say, Heathrow to Melbourne, in an economy class middle seat, and now can barely function. But, otherwise, stand aside! SK

Passengers should have their paperwork ready.

Airport accessibility

Most of us are up for a bit of exercise after a long flight. But the distance from disembarking the plane to arriving at customs or your next departure gate can be interminable. Making my exit recently from Frankfurt Airport, it felt like I had embarked on a hiking holiday in the great indoors. Dallas-Fort Worth in the US is the worst offender, with travellers forced to trudge up to almost 3.5km between gates. Is this a deliberate attempt by airport designers to keep us fit or bad planning? Thank goodness for the travelator. FH

Baggage delays

The baggage carousel sorts life’s worriers from carefree travellers. If you’ve ever had your luggage disappear – as in, never to be seen again – you will understand the lurking fear that can confront you at the carousel. Will your case arrive on time, or not at all? There is a dreadful rise in anxiety as you watch your fellow passengers disperse with laden luggage trolleys, while you stand and wait in hope as one lonely bag completes a full circuit of the conveyor belt – and it’s not yours. AirTags can tell you where your bag is at any moment, but they can’t prevent someone from walking away with it, or help you reclaim it from your departure point if it’s been left behind. FH

Waiting for luggage to appear at the carousel can be nerve-wracking.

At the carousel

Those towering carousels in arrivals halls that spit out bags onto conveyor belts are a menace, if not a real injury risk, as luggage tumbles down from on high and sometimes flies right off. Hello, Sydney and Haneda Tokyo international airports. But at least the latter has chaps in uniforms and peaked caps who climb about like abseilers and organise the luggage in a well-behaved flow down to their colleagues at ground level. Those employees line up the pieces in an orderly line and, if required, hoist onto passengers’ baggage trolleys, all with a bow and a smile. As for those rolling signboards with incorrect baggage claim information or dodgy directions to “oversized items” carousels? Just another day at Dallas-Fort Worth and a caseload of other prime offenders. SK

Trolley service

While baggage trolleys are free to use for incoming passengers at the vast majority of international airports, Australia’s domestic terminals are still up for a nickel and dime profit from departing passengers. Virgin Australia recently hiked up the cost at Melbourne Tullamarine to $5. Across the land, with little or no advance warning as to whether cards or coins are required, you’ll need to be armed with both. At ­Sydney Kingsford Smith departures level, make sure you’re gym-ready if trying to wrestle a trolley from the jammed ranks outside the terminal. And if you think it’s clever to appropriate an abandoned trolley, it might well be lying sideways for good reason. SK

Airport pick-up

We’ve said goodbye to the long goodbye. With the price of parking at airports sky-high, not to mention the threat of being yelled at by someone wearing a high-viz vest, most departures involve a quick kerbstop and a push out the door. Likewise at the other end of the journey, whether you’re doing the collecting or being collected, the “priority” pick-up zone is an absolute bunfight. With cars, trolleys, suitcases and children going in all directions, and everyone on their phone shouting “I’m here”, it’s amazing we all get out of there alive. Then there’s the pressure of ensuring you get through the boom gate just in time before the clock ticks over and hits your credit card with a vengeance. PH

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