Thursday, September 24, 2015

Keep our spoons, you Nadi people




Keep our spoons, you Nadi people
 
At the Nadi airport we had to go through security check again before reaching the transit lounge for our connecting flight. We only had one checked in bag; everything else we were carrying ourselves. When our bags passed through the scanner at the security post at Nadi airport, a security woman excitedly rushed to one of the bags and grabbed it.  
“Do you have any spoons in this bag?” she asked. Yes we had two spoons in that bag. We always keep a bowl and a couple of spoons so that we can have cereal in the morning.
The security woman fetched in the bag and got the spoons out.
“Sorry you cannot take these spoons.”
Why not? We asked with indignation.
We were then shown a list of all the prohibited items. Besides guns and knives and other sharp objects they also had spoons in the list.
“But how come we were allowed to fly with the spoons going through the LAX security?”
They did not know why.  But they did know that they were entitled to confiscate our metal spoons—dangerous objects that can be used to hijack a plane.
What could be done?  We quickly thought.  We had plenty of time till our next flight.  Killing our time in a fight appeared to be the best use of it.  We decided to escalate the issue.
We told them we wanted to talk to their supervisor.
We were asked us to go to the Fiji Airways Lounge and talk to people there. So we went down and talked to one of the two women registering passengers for their stay in the lounge.  She listened to us and then came with us all the way to the security check post where they were holding our spoons. The woman talked to the personnel at the scanner.  All possibilities were explored. Can the spoons be given to the crew of our flight—and we get the spoons from the crew on landing at the Sydney airport?  No, that was not possible.  The only thing possible was to take the loss and leave the spoons there.  We resigned to do that.
Later, we thought about another option we had.  We were going to arrive Nadi over a month later in that trip.  We should have asked the Nadi security people to keep our spoons till then?

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