Lax security clouds relief at finally getting airborne

Herald business editor JIM EAGLES was trapped in the United States. Here's the story of how he got home.

The new aviation security measures introduced by the United States will hopefully make flying safer because, to judge from my experience, they have certainly created horrendous complications and delays.

We got back from the US yesterday after a day of chaos - including nine hours of queuing at air terminals - which ended with our being lucky enough to get just about the last seats on a Qantas flight from Los Angeles to Auckland.

But what I saw of the security arrangements at US airports was scarcely encouraging. In fact, security still looked to be more lax than what we expect in New Zealand.

Our escape from the US, after being trapped for a few days by the grounding of all aircraft, started on a good note when Southwest Airlines confirmed seats on the 1.30 pm flight from Las Vegas to Los Angeles and Qantas said we had seats on the 9.30 pm flight from Los Angeles to Auckland.

Southwest advised us to be at the terminal two hours beforehand because of the likely delays.

We got there 3 1/2 hours early, but that was not enough.

By the time we arrived, the queue for Southwest flights already filled the inside of the McCarran Airport terminal and ran up, down and back again the full length of the road outside.

The massive queue seemed to be caused by a combination of the three-day backlog of passengers, the need for airlines to get their planes back into position and the new security rules, including a ban on kerbside check-ins and - supposedly - tougher checks on baggage and stricter rules on documentation.

In spite of the delays, the atmosphere was amazing because everyone understood the reasons and accepted them. There was a real air of camaraderie.

The airline helped by distributing free sunscreen to those lined up in the sun, providing bottles of cold water, keeping the line moving smoothly and making sure everyone was informed about what was going on.

By the time we got to the head of the queue, four hours later, our Southwest flight had gone but we made it on to the next one.

Less impressive were the security arrangements.

Although the check-in staff wore rubber gloves so they could make baggage searches, we only saw one bag out of all the thousands actually being searched and the checks of our luggage were far more cursory than when we left Auckland Airport three weeks before.

We were told to bring some form of identity document with our photographs, and had our passports at the ready, but no one asked to see them.

And perhaps most amazing of all, a few minutes before the plane was due to take off three passengers suddenly rushed off. Had they left a bomb, it wouldn't have been found because nobody checked.

In Los Angeles, the queue for Qantas tickets was even longer and not as well organised as the one at Las Vegas. There appeared to be only four or five counters for the thousands of economy-class passengers, compared with about a dozen for first and business class, so the line moved at a snail's pace. One young woman just in front of us actually collapsed.

There was a lot of good humour in the queue, but Qantas notably failed to let people know what was going on or prevent some fairly blatant cases of queue-jumping, which at one point almost produced fisticuffs.

As we reached the check-in counter, after just over five hours, the latest of the frequent rumours had it that there were no seats left on the flight to Auckland but there were possibly a few on another to Sydney.

When the Qantas staffer returned after two lengthy visits to some mysterious presence in a back office and told us we had got two of the last seats left on the Auckland plane it was a huge relief. By that stage the queue for tickets had almost doubled in length and almost encircled the Tom Bradley International Terminal.

But again, the security checks on passengers seemed amazingly light. The baggage scrutiny was as perfunctory as ever - the only difference was we were asked if we had any pocket knives in our carry-on luggage - and once we had checked in, we didn't even have our documents scrutinised by immigration officers.

On the other hand, boarding was delayed by 1 1/2 hours, apparently while the police carried out a detailed search of the plane.

And once we were on board we spent 2 1/2 hours sitting in our seats while the airline and the authorities tried to reconcile the passenger list with the number of people actually on the flight.

No wonder that when the captain finally announced the door had been closed there was a spontaneous cheer; that when the plane finally took off, shortly after 3 am, there was another burst of applause; and when it eventually landed in good old safe, settled Auckland there was an even bigger ovation.

Who cared about the delays that had gone before or the worries about being stranded. We finally knew we were safe home. We had escaped from the USA.

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