Idle State

I've also realised that one of the biggest frailties with the whole travel industry is actually the passengers themselves.

It's possible that it's ignorance, unfamiliarity, deliberately trying to buck the system or travel fatigue that might be the cause of passenger related problems but I actually think it's more due to the complete unadulterated stupidity of people.

For instance, why is it that people turn up to a checkin counter with 10 bags, half of them over 32 kg and expect not to have an issue? And then hold up the checkin queue for 10 minutes while they fumble about re-packing things? It's not like they weren't told about baggage limits on their ticket - and it's not like it's impossible to weigh a bags before even leaving home to sort out these problems before getting to the airport.

The second annoyance is people who try to fit a bag which is clearly bigger than the overhead bin into the overhead bin. As far as I know, the laws of physics still apply even within an aircraft and, for the most part, larger objects don't fit into smaller spaces. Then, undoubtedly, the cabin crew get involved and two people end up trying to carry out some Mindfreak kind of stunt above my head with 20 kg of cabin baggage. Unless they're Criss Angel - they should quit it. And the next troglodyte who jams something into an overhead bin crushing my modestly size cabin bag - (book, laptop, phone, iPod, moisturiser - really - what else do you need?) is going to cop an noisy earful from me.

The airlines need to be way way way tougher on these things for the sake of everyone's sanity. I mean - forget screening my shoes - the only malicious thing about my shoes is the odour occasionally - and for all our sakes it would probably be better for me to leave them on. Actually do some useful screening rather than this farce that they actually do.

The gripe pièce de résistance, however, is the folk who get to a security checkpoint and don't empty their pockets of keys, coins, lighters, phones and remove watches and belts and so forth. Then - they act completely surprised on walking through the magnetometer that the detector chirps. So we all wait while they walk back through, force the queue to shuffle back, remove half the items from their pockets and try again. Chirps again. Repeat several more times until the waiting queue of passengers is thoroughly pissed off. Cue next idiot. People! Please! It's not that hard to put all the stuff in a bag before getting to the security screening point. When this happens, the passenger should be pulled out and put into a secondary idiot screening queue so the rest of us can just walk straight through, get to the lounge and have a drink.

Having said all that, I do feel sorry for parents with prams who, it seems, have their own special un-facilitated nightmare trying to get through security check points. That just highlights the lack of imagination in the screening process - and really - the security process should be thinking imaginatively - because for sure the bad guys are.