FUN-travel: Recap – Flight Fiascos
December 20, 2016 by Susan Clarke · Comments Off on FUN-travel: Recap – Flight Fiascos
They’ve clearly taken the FUN out of Flying!
Himalaya’s Leh Airport – is military and was the worst airport experience we have ever had! Our guide was not allowed to go in with us to assist. Communication breakdown was a HUGE problem.
- 1st – they tried to make me check my carry on (I had to whine & plead that it had my medication, cosmetics, laptop, jewelry, etc). People with backpacks bigger than my bag had no problem!
- 2nd – they tried to charge us for overweight bags that were prepaid.
- 3rd – we had to go through 3 security checks inside the airport – (all carry on bags had to be tagged and stamped and signed at each checkpoint)
- 4th – then you have to go outside to identify your bags before they load them (all this in subzero temperatures, there is no heating)
- 5th – then your boarding passes are checked again on the tarmac before you board the plane!
India – airports have no standard for laptops or liquids. Anything goes or doesn’t depending on where you are! If you are on a direct flight (one that stops) the plane de-boards, then airport personnel pass through the cabin rechecking all boarding passes and make passengers ID their baggage in the bins.
- And women have separate security lines. I am not kidding! In Delhi there were 20 for men and 3 for women…and this is when we were just changing planes. It took me over 35 minutes to get through.
Prayer Wheels
- Maldives – they confiscate anything that is not allowed but they do give it back when you fly out. My idol of
worship (Ganesha statue) was a definite no no! As was liquor.
- Heathrow – don’t have anything that resembles a liquid in your carryon that is not in a baggy and placed in a bin. We waited an hour (seriously) to pick up our hand carry. They thoroughly searched each bag and there were only 8 before they got to ours. It was overkill to say the least!
FUN-fact – on the plus side our carry on bags were never weighed. And for the flights that we prepaid an extra 5 kilos they let us slide when we were a couple of kilos over.
More FF – For the 3 Myanmar flights – none of our bags were weighed and they didn’t care if you had more than 2 carry on items.