Pax I dislike Vol 0.3

- Pax with unrealistic excess luggage who wait until the very last minute to check-in

Oh it’s not an airport legend. This is another extraordinary phenomenon that is known to every check-in agent worldwide. There is always someone who shows up at the same exact minute you are closing the check-in counter with unreasonable excess luggage. They know this is crunch time and you don’t have that much time to haggle with them. I’m not talking about 5 or 10 kilos of excess luggage, but 30 to 40 kilos or even more.

These passengers know you are pressed for time and that you are more likely to turn a blind eye on the excess luggage than delay a flight.

What usually happens is a common scene that repeats itself over and over again. You get ready to close the counter and here is someone with 2 or 3 suitcases of almost 60 kilos (when they are allowed only 20 kg.) You tell them they have excess and they say they’ll pay but once they find out that they are going to be charged more than their ticket fare, they obviously refuse to pay deciding to remove items from their bags. You look at your watch and you are already two minutes behind closing time, they have their suitcases wide open in front of the counters removing items. “Did I just see a whole box of milk?” you ask yourself while the Weight & Balance department is sending you frenetic messages through the radio. They are pleading for you to close the check-in counter quickly so they can create the flight’s final figures.

Now these passengers place their re-packed luggage on the belt again and even though they removed a few items, they are still carrying a lot of excess weight. You are already 10 minutes late. You are stressing out and you become exasperated. There is no time to haggle anymore, nor there is time for them to go pay the excess luggage as the boarding call is being announced. You finally yell “GO! Just go”. You check their luggage in and warn them NOT to show up at the boarding gate with large hand luggage.

What do they do? They show up at the boarding gate with all the stuff they removed from their checked-in suitcases in their hands. They usually carry 3 or 4 big sports bags and/or trollies.

You can’t help but get infuriated because the whole debacle happens again at the boarding gate. You tell them they cannot board the plane with that amount of hand luggage and they begin haggling with you. There is NO time for that. You either feel compelled to deny them boarding and have them miss their flight, or you once again turn a blind eye and send the excess luggage to the plane’s hold as last minute luggage.

Obvisouly, the flight has been delayed and you are responsible for it.

Unfortunately, I have become jaded and cold hearted. I used to turn a blind eye, but I’ve been fooled so many times and been accountable for so many delays that I’ve lost all my sensibilities. If you show up at the check-in counter at crunch time with 30 kilos of excess luggage, you’re not flying. Period. I don’t waist time haggling anymore. If you show up at the boarding gate with unreasonable hand luggage after being told not to take it, you are not flying. You may be lucky however and catch me in a somewhat good mood, that luggage will go into the aircraft’s hold with a hand written baggage tag which most probably will cause it to get lost or misplaced for a few days.

kids left alone

The summer is GONE! Change in the airport is evident the moment you enter the road heading to the parking area and the terminal. No more traffic and loud horns, people zig-zagging between cars with their luggage. You can’t smell edginess in the air inside the terminal anymore. No long queues, overbooked flights and rude passengers. Notably, there aren’t that many children traveling alone anymore. Oh how I love the low season!

During the summer, it is not strange to have 8 children traveling unaccompanied in the same flight. We used to laugh at the flight dispatchers when they used to come and pick up the kids from the boarding gate to take them to the aircraft. If it wasn’t for their bright safety jackets you’d confuse them with summer camp guides than airport employees.

I have no problem with children traveling alone. I have a problem however with some parents. Yes, the airline company becomes responsible for the child but it does not in any case become a nursery or a play ground where you can drop your kid and leave.

We’ve had a 9 year old dropped off at the entrance of the terminal to fend for himself. Mind you, the kid knew what he was doing. He queued in the right counter and presented his passport and luggage to the check-in agent all by himself. It’s obvious he’s done it before. His parents couldn’t be found. Obviously, we couldn’t accept the child especially since he was taking an international flight!

Another incident we’ve had this summer was a 7 year old with an international connecting flight with a stop over of over six hours! What’s the child supposed to do for 6 hours alone? Yes, he’s in the care of the airline company but what are we supposed to do with him during all this time? Sit him on a chair in the office while we do our paperwork? Six hours! I don’t get it.

There’s more anecdotes of course there are! I can’t remember many of them. I spent the summer in a haze and I’m happy to have blocked most of it out of my memory. However, I do remember one family who got pretty angry at us for not accepting their child. The kid had a connecting flight which he was going to miss because of a delay. In these cases, we can’t accept unaccompanied minors because there are no guarantees they can be rerouted that same day onto a different flight if they miss their connecting flight. The parents didn’t get it. They said the kid could take the next flight the following morning if he loses his connecting flight. Now I don’t get that. How can you send your kid away with a 100% he’s missing his connecting flight and would have to sleep one night alone in another city? Really, it blows my mind. I didn’t accept the kid that day even though I may now have a pierced eardrum from all the yelling I got from his parents.

Here’s an interesting incident. Didn’t happen to us (thank god!). Some airline mishandled an unaccompanied minor situation where the kid left the aircraft by himself. I have mixed feelings about the whole thing but hey, I’m weird like that.