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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