Somewhere Over The Rainbow

Somewhere over The Rainbow – Judy Garland

‘Miss? Follow me, please,’ the customs officer at Belfast’s international airport says as he starts putting on his rubber gloves.
- ‘What seems to be the matter, good sir?’ my friend Ilse inquires, ever the communications teacher – assuming an attentive, concerned attitude and engaging in open, neutrally phrased questions rather than a less cooperative ‘I don’t think so, mister’.
- ‘Standard procedure,’ the officer replies with a face that indicates he expects the rubber to give him a nasty rash. How come everybody else is still standing in line, passports ready? Ilse observes as she follows the man. Maybe this particular procedure isn’t that standard, after all? The officer doesn’t think she’s very funny. Off to one of the airport’s private, fluorescent lit interrogation rooms it is.

Ilse is coming to visit. As it happens, her work brings her to Belfast for a week, to teach typically Dutch communication skills to students over there. She can get a few days off after that. Since she will already be up to her elbows in old British colonies by then, it only makes sense to head straight from Belfast to New York, without wasting any precious time by going home first. Ilse books a flight from Amsterdam to Belfast, from Belfast via London to New York and a nonstop return flight from New York to Amsterdam. She’s very practical like that. British and American customs, however, aren’t buying it.

In London, my friend is picked out of the passport line again, and for a second time she is given the third degree in a place where there is no darkness. Why was she in Belfast? What does she mean, she was there for work? Who does she work for? Can she prove any of this? Why isn’t she going back to Amsterdam? What does she plan to be doing in New York? Who is that supposed friend? And why exactly did she spend a night in London at a random airport hotel?

Finally London allows her on a plane to New York. The plane lands without any delay. I am waiting in Arrivals. No Ilse. I wait some more. Still no Ilse. When at last she walks through the sliding doors, she has been politely forced into an interrogation room for the third time in 24 hours, this time staving off two American officers wanting to know what it is exactly that she planned to do in the land of the free. Welcome to America! I try.

My friend is a well educated Western-European woman; she has no religious or other criminal convictions; she is always friendly, and on top of that she’s pretty. Why would international airports pick her out of a line not once, but three times on the same trip? What ominous profile does she fit without even knowing it?
Are they confusing her with someone on the American No-Fly List (Europe has plans to conjure up a similar list to ward off suspected fly-by-night terrorists)? If it can happen to eight year olds, all bets are off.
Maybe there’s something wrong with airport security. Any scanner that can mistake Mexican mole sauce for explosives might deem my friend’s old socks a threat to national security, too.
Maybe her Passenger Name Record states something unusual.
Is the combination of traveled cities (Amsterdam-Belfast-London-New York) controversial? Or the fact that she is a girl traveling alone, carrying a backpack?
We can’t figure it out. Of course every airport traveler legally has the right to refuse interrogation by customs officers. Unfortunately, customs officers have precisely the nutshell of power that enables them to legally refuse you on any flight. Either way you lose. You can’t beat the airline industry.

Thankfully, both Ilse and I belong to that assortment of naïves who insist the world is a good place. Man is essentially good, and man’s organizations and actions are rooted in good intentions, we like to think. Even if thinking that means having to violate (or, as we like to call it: rainbow) essential facts. Truth? What good has ever come of truth? We are positive there’s a way to rainbow three private interrogations on a single trip. Maybe, we start thinking on the bus to my home, it is all a matter of the airline industry wanting to give Ilse her money’s worth.
You see, part of any ticket price is made up of taxes and fees. Those taxes and fees are in part made up of what the airline industry calls an Air Travelers Security Charge. They are the fees that magically increase your ticket price. For instance, on a return ticket from Belfast to New York for $ 386, an extra $ 435 in taxes and fees is added at the online checkout. Instead of the initial $ 386 you end up paying $ 821 for your return flight. In this case, more than half the money you pay for a seat on a plane has nothing to do with that seat on that plane.

The point is that Ilse paid for three different tickets to get to New York; that means she paid security charges three times. We rainbow that the airline industry must have thought it was time to give a valued customer something in return. You know what, they must have thought, this lady has earned and bought the right to a little tour behind the scenes. We will give her an opportunity to experience, up close, how we as an industry make sure our travelers can feel safe. What the hell, we’ll give her three experiences.
Ilse and I decide that we like this version of the facts. We’ll stick to it for now. After all, we consider, the airline industry would never make their customers pay $ 435 on top of their ticket price in order to secure their safety, and subsequently treat those same paying customers like threats to society. That would just be silly.

Unless, we think, the airline industry is trying to reinvent its international airports as some kind of extreme adventure sport location. You know extreme sports: the type of activity where the price goes up the more you want to suffer. Climbed the Kilimanjaro, swam with sharks, went on diet boot camp, base jumped off the Eiffel tower? Think you’ve seen and done it all when it comes to experiencing fear and fatigue for money? Not if the airline industry can help it. Anyone who pays taxes and fees over the amount of $ 400 is guaranteed a minimum of one cavity search plus individual interrogation on any international flight. Too much, too soon? All standard airline fees include some airport classics: Standing In Line For A Very Long Time; Handing Over Your Privacy; and Partially Undressing In Front Of Total Strangers. People dig expensive torment.
(The exceptionalist who does not appreciate adventure entertainment during his travels, or who just wants to arrive at his destination without delay, can be registered as a ‘Clear’ traveler for an annual $ 100, to be paid on top of his plane tickets with taxes and fees. Of course he has to give up his privacy, his iris- and his fingerprints first, and any background check must come up clean.)

Customs harassment as an extreme sport, with the usually uninvited and somehow never quite expected intrusion of the body replacing the adrenalin rush of a free fall. Ilse and I decide we might just as easily accept this version as truth. It gives us the bonus option of admiring the airline industry for coming up, under the guise of outrageous security policy, with customer service that is both inventive and progressive. Finding a new niche for air travelers can’t have been easy (what could customers possibly want other than arriving at their destination on time?); the industry’s bold move to offer its customers extreme sports while on the fly, shows an ability to think outside the box that we think is to be applauded.
Yay for the airline industry.