March 19, 2008	Wednesday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 10, 1429

Archives Write to Mr. Irfan Husain

IT MUST be age, but I must confess that the prospect of catching a flight no longer excites me. On the contrary, the thought of the queues at the airport for security, customs, check-in and immigration fills me with a vague sense of dread. But having chosen to live a life that involves frequent travel, I suffer the indignities and inconvenience of taking my belt and shoes off for inspection by sundry security personnel at airports in several cities and continents.

Readers who have entered and exited the UK through Heathrow will understand why the airport is also known as Death Row. When you leave your plane, you are faced with endless corridors full of people from around the world racing you to the immigration counters. And when you finally get to the end of the marathon, you are faced with snaking lines of passengers who are forced to wait patiently for the handful of officials who process the multitude before waving them towards the cavernous luggage hall.

Given the crowds and the chaos that await me at Heathrow, I am delighted at the prospect of the opening of Terminal 5. This is the biggest covered area in Britain, and, according to the hype, will enable the Heathrow complex to handle 90 million passengers a year. Among other marvels, it will also contain 800 toilets. Above all, Terminal 5 is designed to be passenger-friendly in a way other terminals aren’t. For instance, you will be able to check in yourself by punching in your reservation number into a free-standing terminal. However, this is a mixed blessing as I can see myself, struggling to get my reading glasses out, while trying to make sure nobody walks off with my laptop and assorted hand luggage.

But while western airports are trying to make life easier for the millions who fly to and from them, planners and bureaucrats in our part of the world do their best to make things harder for passengers. For instance, a few years ago I travelled to South India with a 15-member group that consisted of stepchildren, friends and their kids from Britain. With my green Pakistani passport, I stood in a separate queue, having filled a form handed to me in the plane. But when I got to the front of the line that had inched slowly along, I was told that I had to fill in yet another form that was available in another hall. Then the official carefully scrutinised the forms, my visa and my person before reluctantly stamping my passport. No doubt Indians visiting Pakistan suffer the same delays. Anyway, by the time I emerged from the airport, the rest of the group had been waiting for me for nearly an hour.

At Karachi’s Quaid-i-Azam airport, officials have taken the art of annoying passengers to another level. When you enter the terminal, you have to present your ticket to the airport security staff who make a pretence of reading the document. You then go through the customs counter where you can be asked to open your luggage if the officials there so desire. You next put all your baggage, including hand luggage, on to an X-ray machine, while you walk through a metal detector.

You now proceed to the airline check-in where you get into line. So far, so good, but things get interesting at this point. Once your luggage has been weighed and you get your boarding pass, your stuff is not placed on the conveyor belt behind the check-in counter, as is the case in the rest of the world. Here, you have to take it to yet another X-ray machine where barely educated officials can ask you to open your suitcases, even when you tell them your luggage has just been scanned.

Next, you stand in line to get your passport stamped. Here, you are photographed and your image is checked against the computerised database supplied by the FBI, and your visa for your destination is scrutinised, as is your boarding pass. Once you are past this hurdle, you next have to queue up again for another immigration officer to check your passport all over again.

Finally you head towards the boarding area, but before you can enter it, your hand luggage is put through another scanner while you pass through a metal detector after handing over all metal objects, and taking your shoes off. Your hand luggage and your boarding pass are stamped and you finally collapse into a chair, wishing there was a bar around that served the strongest possible concoction to help you recover from your ordeal. And when your flight is announced, you join another queue, and have your hand luggage stamp checked before you finally board the plane.

I have often wondered at the duplication of all these checks. Perhaps a well-informed reader can tell me why everything has to be done twice here, when no other airport I have travelled to or from raises so many hurdles for passengers. Nowhere else do you need to have your luggage scanned twice, or, indeed, get little tags for handbags and get them stamped. And no other airport requires you to queue for two immigration officials to scrutinise your passport separately. While security has been increased at Western airports, once your luggage has been checked in, you don’t need to worry about it, except hope it gets to your destination.

The same double act happens when you enter Pakistan through Jinnah airport: you line up with your passport and immigration card, and once the official has stamped your passport, you then have to show it again to another immigration guy at the exit. But before you get into line, you walk past a Health Department desk where you are supposed to hand in a health declaration form that asks if you have been to a zone which has yellow fever. It’s years since I filled in this form, but these zealous officials still man the desk, collecting forms from gullible passengers. What happens to these documents is beyond me, but this, too, is unique to Pakistan, as is so much else.

After all these hassles, you may well wonder why I fly at all. The truth is that despite my whingeing before and during a trip, I usually have a good time when I get to my destination. And no, getting there is not half the fun.