How Charles de Gaulle Fails Woefully at Customer Assistance

An Experience Best Forgotten

My experience at Charles de Gaulle (CDG) Airport in Paris yesterday evening is one to be forgotten for all time. As someone who has used a walking cane for decades, this airport poorly manages access for those with mobility issues. The walks are long, lifts are usually out of service, and toilets are rarely situated near where you need them.

After radiotherapy treatment for prostate cancer in 2024, I have requested airport Customer Assistance for all legs of my journey, but this is the first time I have passed through CDG. In Manchester, Amsterdam, and Cape Town, beyond the issue with easily accessible toilets for those in the assistance pool, there was information, consideration, assistance, and personnel to do the job.

Unprepared and Understaffed

Even though Air France-KLM was aware of my request for almost three months, their preparedness for it at CDG left much to be desired. We arrived at the end of a 12-hour flight from Cape Town, and there was no one at the gate to collect the three of us who needed assistance. I had to ask the flight crew what the situation was.

I was assured they would be with us soon, but one lady arrived with a wheelchair to convey three of us. She applied almost octopus-like skill to laden herself with our carry-on luggage, and we basically had to walk the few hundred yards through security to the waiting area. The information was muddled and unclear, but we waited until a shuttle bus arrived.

Neither Voice Nor Agency

Our boarding passes were in the hands of the personnel, being passed around between them to our collective discomfort. Each time, someone had to ask if the boarding passes were still around. Many of the personnel we encountered at this international airport spoke to us in French. It was uncomfortable.

In the end, we resigned ourselves to the fact that we would be delivered to wherever we needed to be, because our incapacity seemed to be a debilitating disability for which we had neither voice nor agency. Delivered to the gate, my boarding pass was checked, but I was barely noticed when we were asked to board.

A Systemic Failure

From this experience, if you have mobility issues, CDG must be avoided at all costs. This is not an issue with the people at the front line delivering the service; rather, it is a management failure laid bare. Totally unacceptable and utterly despicable. "Appalled" does not begin to describe what should warrant the high point of a one-star review of this service—dishonest at best.

A Google NotebookLM AI Audio Overview Discussion of this blog

Travel: Denuded by cravat

A principle to keep

I always wish I have nothing to complain about when I am travelling. I appreciate the fact that my standards for travel can be exacting, this is because if leaving my home will not be more comfortable than my being at home, I have no business leaving home.

Once people understand that basic requirement, it is the end of all disputes. Now, my journey to Johannesburg is as circuitous as you can get travelling from Manchester.

Loyalty pays

Manchester is hardly a hub, and whilst budget airlines and charter flights can do point-to-point connections, if you are to travel by scheduled commercial flights, you will probably have to transit through London Heathrow if you are flying the Oneworld fleet that includes British Airways, through Frankfurt on the Star Alliance fleet which includes Lufthansa or either Paris or Amsterdam for the SkyTeam fleet which includes AirFrance or KLM.

My preference is for the SkyTeam because I have a longstanding loyalty scheme with them having lived in the Netherlands and really compared to other fleets, they appear to be much more affordable.

Besides, I believe in loyalty schemes for travel purposes, sticking with SkyTeam meant I had enough miles to fly to India in 2011 and when it comes to hotels, I now use Hotels.com for all my accommodation needs. In the past two years, I have had 5 free nights in various hotels, just keeping with one scheme rather than shopping around for cheap deals and consequently building no custom that could be nicely rewarded.

Stripped of my dignified appearance

However, on getting to Amsterdam after the first leg of my three-leg trip to Johannesburg, the transfer to my Amsterdam–Paris leg required going through passport control and security checks again.

I emptied my pockets, took off my watch, laid out my laptops and took my jacket and hat off, as we all do with the music-less striptease that has become the standard airport passenger routine.

That indignity is hard enough until the security personnel asked that I also take off my cravat. Take of my cravat? Well, the uncultured Philistine called it a scarf. It made me wonder if they were also required to take off their ties when navigating security.

In my 20 or so years of passing through Amsterdam Schiphol Airport, I have never ever been as publicly denuded as I did experience this evening, I was beyond exasperated in disbelief.

So there

I will not want to go into the mind of whoever or whatever informed this new security requirement. I obliged, throwing up my hands in perplexity and collected my things after they had been scanned.

I retired to the lounge licking my wounds, the thought that sanctity of high culture could be so contemned is a reflection of the world we now live in.

There is another 15 hours of travel to go.

France: As we did it

We were off

It could have lasted longer but for events completely out of our control. A butterfly apparently flapped its wings in America and it caused a hurricane in Europe.

A month ago, I jetted off to France to lead a deployment team that was to visit over 20 countries in the following 6 months – I was full of excitement.

Our arrival in the dreadful Charles de Gaulle airport had me walking literally a mile in Terminal 2 to meet up with other members of my party who had flown in from Manchester.

Disarray we could do without

Our firm had engaged a travel agent that just seemed to make a mess of our car hire, our hotel bookings and much else, a turn-around journey that could have lasted less than 5 hours took the best part of 11; we were not pleased.

When we got to our hotel, we just knew this was not where we wanted to spend the next 20 days, in the middle of nowhere, far from facilities and sentenced to pizza deliveries in the witching hour, something had to give.

Our firm got this sorted that we ended up in another hotel from the third night, it was further away from Paris but it had a life about it and good transport connections to our place of work and into Paris.

Not ready but going steady

Work was interesting, there was much to do but one could not vouch for the preparedness of the whole process to deliver what we were there to do.

In the end, we got some progress and things began to pick up as upheavals, dismissals and disbandment circled around us that we needed to seek assurances of all concerned.

One had to be able and deft, we won through and delivered on our remit, sought improvements to certain implementations and took the opportunity to offer advice that we thought could make things go even better.

Good for me

Though we were to be out there for 21 days with 6 days off, we did 24 days with only three days off, sometimes working the unholiest hours, caught in French detours of traffic that took over 30 minutes to unravel.

The politics of the environment was moving at fast pace from the United State; overruns and overspends suddenly meant that the dream of extensive travel will for now end with France.

For me, I regained my technical acumen, my confidence and my knack for problem resolution whilst being completely mindful of the people affected by my activities. I made three good friends too. We might just do it again – who knows?

As a hostage to a baggage crisis

Hostage to a baggage crisis

Everything went well for my return to Amsterdam from Stockholm until we got to Schiphol airport where the dial on the Farce-meter did read empty on competence and problem management.

Apparently there was an accident in the baggage sorting area that meant a delay in retrieving our baggage from baggage reclaim.

We were told there would be a delay of about 15 minutes; I think it was well passed the hour before I picked up my luggage.

As we waited by the assigned conveyor belt there were certain announcements made about the delay, then about the airport being a non-smoking airport, the advice not to leave luggage unattended and then changes to the assigned conveyor belts for baggage reclaim.

Amsterdam we are told has one of the most sophisticated baggage sorting systems and it has featured on the National Geographic television channel.

Between computers and silly human ideas

My concerns about those changes were two-fold, at first the indicators were not updated to reflect that change and then only the flight numbers were announced.

On the matter of the indicators, it should have been an easy software fix to show that under the remarks column that passengers to go to another conveyor belt and the newly assigned conveyor belt updated with the information.

I was quite surprised by the use of only the flight numbers because I never once checked my flight number and I felt people would have been better served by first announcing the origin of the flight and then the flight number, that way we would have been better focused on using the information properly.

Cities and flight numbers

From what I noticed of all fellow passengers as myself, none of us moved to the new conveyor belt because for each KLM flight number there were at least 5 code-sharing flight numbers – the time between scanning though the list of flights from other origins and then the one that pertained to your journey just left you hoping you will hear the advice again.

I did match the flight number to my flight but by then I had lost the other crucial information that I had to go to the service desk to be helped when Stockholm was cleared off the indicator as all baggage completely off-loaded.

At the service desk, I was told where to get my luggage and when I said they should have announced the origin with the flight numbers the lady looked at me as if it was a stupid suggestion and gave the silly excuse that there were so many flights to handle.

What it would have saved them and us if only they had done the sensible and easy thing – all announcements for boarding are made with flight numbers and destination, all notice boards with arrivals or departures always have origin or destination with flight numbers – I think the point is made.

The smell of home

As I walked to the trains a hawker of perfumes accosted me and ask if I had a wife, I had no time for small talk, talk less of smelly talk, I just wanted to get home but I had the presence of mind to refuse the offer of a cheap ticket bought in error to Amsterdam when the ticket machine offered a better discount.

I got home tucked in a mozzarella salad and that was home sweet home.

Holiday snaps: A touch of privilege

Step forward for access

The wait at Madrid was long enough, just under 3 hours of killing time during which I sat in the dire lounge watching planes touch-down and take-off.

I had arrived too early for a gate number for my transit flight and was informed I would be called when the gate is known.

A few minutes before boarding time I saw the gate on the screen and made for the boarding gate, within 10 minutes the announcer asked us to come forward giving priority to those who might need assistance, elite passengers and those with children.

Grabbed from privilege

So, I stepped forward being an elite passenger by reason of loyalty but just as I was about to present my boarding pass, I was tapped on the shoulder by a man, a father with his wife and child in a stroller and he gesticulated to his child, I then gesticulated with my cane.

The question then becomes who needs more assistance, two able-bodied adults with a bubbly child of 2 or a man who needs a cane to walk about?

The matter of priority is another thing, I would have had to show off my elite card and mouth a near obscenity – in both cases, the fair-minded would defer to my being served first in those circumstances.

I was in no mood to get rattled by some stupid sightless aggravation, I let them go before me, I would have been slower anyway because we had to ride a bus to the plane getting there by steps; there was no gangway connection.

Late but sped

When we finally got on the plane, I thought we would be on time, it took another 45 minutes before we took off just because some people had taken their Spanish siesta early rather than make their way to the airport and onto the plane.

One thing about flying is you cannot be done for speeding, we made up for lost time and gained back 30 of those 45 minutes, an Airbus 330-200 it was and what a bumpy ride we had in the air at some points.

Baggage declaim

At Las Palmas, one of my airport peeves was played before me, people who gather at the conveyor belt blocking the way for others who already have their stuff on the belt. There just doesn’t seem to be any decorum at those places, dare I say a sense of breeding at the risk of snobbery.

When I said excuse me to get my suitcase, with a cane in one hand, surely, someone could have offered to help, but no, I struggled with it and as I got it off, well, it literally landed on a big buffoon’s feet who should have moved out of the way seeing I was pulling off the equivalent of a trunk. It should not be Baggage Reclaim but Baggage Declaim.

At the exit, I saw my name with the N in my surname, I forgave the infringement, handed my suitcase to the chauffeur and got to the hotel to be welcomed by known faces again.

Holiday snaps: A lounge to lunge from

An apology, I say

If anything, the “lounge” at the Madrid Barajas International Airport is a complete let-down, it exudes the worst of Spanish hospitality and comfort.

The furniture that probably looked cool years ago is dated, the fittings are cheap, the sockets are broken and falling apart, the choice of snacks leave much to be desired and to add insult to injury, one has to pay for wireless access.

Apart from the peace and quiet from the hustle and bustle of the airport terminal below, one can easily sit elsewhere with ear-plugs and be at peace.

Just not up to scratch

For a capital city airport, it is appalling, but then, I have been to the lounge at the Barcelona airport too and really, that takes the concept of lounges to a new depth of despair, it is the equivalent of the Ryanair of air travel comfort.

A bargain basement allocation of space for travellers to swear never to visit again; even if offered a bye to enter on the cheapest class of air travel available. Generally functional, rudimentary to the core and primitive at best.

I am surprised that there has been no clamour to get the managers of these lounges to polish up their act, with all the resorts and holiday locations the Spaniards squandered billions on in the property boom, upgrading these lounges to the healthy status of Spanish friendliness and comfort should have been a doddle.

Lunge from this lounge

It is not like one wants to spent the whole day here for any reason when you are on your way somewhere, either waiting to depart from Madrid or in transit through Madrid.

On the ratings scale my verdict is, the Madrid Barajas Airport lounge is a lounge to lunge from, probably headlong too.

Taking off in all senses

Look out to taking off

Looking out of my office window today reminded me of my last home in Nigeria but this was closer to the action.

The simple act of travelling by air is a beehive of activity you can never fully comprehend; lorries, trucks and odd-shaped vehicles in a secluded world, segregated from the normal world.

Then the most magnificent wonder than never ceases to amaze me, the streamlined bodies of metal that race down the tarmac and take off into the air to some destination near or far.

Even I cannot believe that I have not travelled out of the Netherlands for over 6 months, this a person who once felt 3 long weeks in Amsterdam needed a lengthier holiday abroad.

Yes, from my office window, I am in that world called air-side but I have no access to the place not that you want to caught in the traffic or deafened by the noise of all those vehicles – it just looks fascinating from the comfort of my office.

The buzz, the fuss

We were to complete a seemingly simple task today which probably should have taken 90 minutes but lasted the whole day – changes that are complicated by half-finished jobs of others that had been signed off until you find yourself lumbered with your situation and finding solutions to those discovered.

That, I think is the office excitement I missed and the making of an eventful day that I had no time to feel tired or yawn – I have just completed my second day at work and I really feel so good about that.

Like I said early in the month, after February is recovery. Lest I forget, I sent an update out to my friends, thanking them for responding and calling, one of the callers was my recruiting agent who managed my affairs some 14 years ago for 4 years in the UK.

I have a short 2-month contract, I intend to make the best of it – it is just so nice to have friends.

Arrival Hall

Collecting the arrivals

Playing hostess not necessarily with the mostest can be exhilarating, the preparation that showcases your homes like it has never been for years in memory and the cleaner is invited twice in one week to shift the dust to other surfaces and stuff stray objects into malformed boxes.

The most important part is collecting your guests from their port of entry, the bus station is hardly sophisticated, the train station is tolerable but the airport is another place entirely.

You may not be sure of the expected arrival time of a bus, that of the train is set except where there are delays, strangely, I have waited for trains at the end of a seeming 6-hour long journey only to learnt 5 minutes before its arrival that it had been cancelled – it beggars belief.

The Arrivals Hall

Going to the airport suddenly seems like the most organised arrangement, you know the flight number, the expected arrival time and the signboards indicate if it has arrived or not – the waiting time is mostly expended in the baggage reclaim – that function is still not computerised, you need brawn to get your chattels off the cargo hold.

Now, I have met many at airports but Schiphol is a completely different experience, raucous it is rather than civilised, it is a party atmosphere and never reserved.It is a Dutch peculiarity, I have decided.

Family and friend groups, as many as 10 could be there to meet their quarry with colourful balloons, banners, cameras and kids running around, you will think it was a circus.

The passenger arrives and as the doors open, a tumult of joy and noise ensues, enough camera flashes to induce unwarranted discomfort and here I was thinking we were welcoming an entourage from Bombay – on closer inspection they were native Northern Europeans returning from an orgy of sun worship having sacrificed their natural tone for a possible skirmish with melanoma.

The love

I see the lady wait for her man and as she sees him, tears well up, a rush to a hug as she sweeps him off his feet – yes, I got the gender positioning right. Full labial smackers rather than the customary Dutch three kisses then other members of the welcoming party get theirs, but you see whose relationship is deepest.

Absence could make the heart grow the fodder of sadness but the expectation and arrival shows that absence does make the heart grow fonder still.

Where the relationship is familial, it appears the matriarch gets the first show of deep affection before anyone else, however, when that relationship skips one generation, one has a wry smile as grandson runs up to grandparent and this conversation ensues to the exclusion of the parents.

My life in a soppy universe

In those situations, one does wonder about that parallel universe, the one I woke up in a few months ago with a wife and 2 kids – dreams so sublime are nightmares in disguise because the thinking part of me wondered when wife and kids happened to me without me knowing or participating – the cold sweat, the palpitations and the sudden jolt into the comfort of reality.

The couples are young still, they are all still having children but some did not let the placenta drop before they were on to the next, they cope but it cannot be fun, if it were my situation.

My guests arrive, handshakes and hugs, after a drink we are back at my boudoir – need to turn down the sheets, it is almost bedtime.

The Netherlands rises above sea level

All out, all out

I could almost wager that the parts of the Netherlands below sea level which includes Schiphol airport at -5 meters World have risen to a mean above sea level at least for a week.

I say this because as I was leaving for holiday on Saturday morning, the taxi queues for departures were quite long and the departure lounge was brimming with people trying to escape the dreary weather of Northern Europe despite the rare improvements in weather with some sun and rising temperatures.

One can only be so grateful for services like priority check-in, access to lounges to relax before a flight and being known by name as you take your seat on the flight - it all takes away the stress of travel.

Deluge of holidays

Netherlands usually has the least number of bank or public holidays in Europe, numbering a paltry 8 days and there are no breaks between the middle of May and the Christmas holidays.

This year, with Easter being so early, we have very rare bunching up of holidays that probably happen one in a lifetime in Calvinist Holland – the government seems to hate free days.

So, on Wednesday, the 30^th April, we have Queens Day which is the day the great unwashed come into the cities and defile it buying bric-a-brac and drinking to a stupor, why people get excited about the day escapes me – we the city-dwellers take the opportunity to desert town before they arrive.

Tolerant dimensions of the Dutch

Thursday ushers in a Christian Holiday, Ascension Day, celebrated throughout continental Christian Europe and most organisations have decided there is no point having staff come in on the Friday, thus reducing the week to a 2-day week.

In that decision, you find the subtlety of Dutch tolerance – the appreciation of human inclination or frailty and an accommodation of the situation.

It explains why we appreciate people have a need for liberal sexual gratification or indulge in mind-altering substances – we recognise the situation, and accommodation it by providing a location for the activity and regulate it such that the criminal element is considerably reduced.

All abroad

Having a week set up like that, people reckon the number of sick calls on the Friday might make opening offices unprofitable so it is better to close and allow the goodwill of people having Friday off without having to feign some sickness or tell tall tales.

That explains why making of the Dutch have gone sun-seeking, then May the 12^th is another holiday – Pentecost, so like me have just merged the whole weekend-holiday, week-holiday stretch into a 2-week getaway – as easy as, get me to the sun PDQ. (Pretty Damn Quick)

Back home

Getting back

Having spent 19 days on holiday, I still had to phone up the travel agency because my arrangement for a hotel-to-airport transfer had been left off the roster.

After a few phone calls, I was told a taxi would arrive to pick me up by 13:50 which gave me a few hours to have breakfast at Moby’s and an hour at the Internet café a few blocks down the road.

Getting to the airport was easy and once I got in line for check-in it was no more like I would be travelling Comfort Class, it was like waiting for dis-Comfort service as the queue for Economy Class moved at almost three times the speed of ours, one could only wonder what was so difficult about checking in the lot of price insensitive people like me who were travelling Comfort Class.

Why do I say price insensitive? I have been reading The Undercover Economist and the scales are falling off my eyes as to how I have been fleeced and cajoled into spending a lot more than I need to for anything I purchase, be it goods or services – a must read for anyone who is looking for a dummies guide economics.

Not back to doors

I was in this ‘shorter’ queue for 70 minutes, but which time I was trying every stretching, yoga or bending move I could think of to alleviate the pain in my back – my cane was definitely not helping here because it is useful for when I saunter or walk but not when one is standing still.

Through the pain, I was offered a window seat, I went through security checks remembering that I had bought a few pairs of shoes for my birthday and consciously decide they would not have fiddly laces but buckles or zippers.

One pair of shoes did have buckles and the other was a pair of boots with zippers down the inner sides – it shows how the encumbrance or rather the inconvenience of travelling through London Heathrow where the strip tease includes taking off your shoes can affect decisions further down the line.

These footwear would be easy to take off and put on, though at one time I wondered if it was not folly to take two new pairs of shoes on holiday without having worn them in.

Below sea level

When I finally got on the plane, I found my window seat was really the emergency exit, I could not see myself doing the doors at 35,000 feet, no, not even at 4 feet with a back like mine.

The air steward eventually persuaded a couple to take up my place and the one next to it as I was moved to a three-seater shared by two.

When we got to Amsterdam Schiphol, it was interesting to see the altimeter read as low as -15 feet below sea level – as it were, it was once a lake reclaimed in 1852 – is it any wonder that God created the world and the Dutch created Holland?

De excitement La Catalunya

Packing the world

One might say, wonder why one would be visiting Barcelona for a week for a conference without taking in the weekend. Well, I decided to sandwich the busy week into two weekends so my trip to Barcelona today and returning next Sunday.

I finally packed my bag after having just about an hour’s conversation with my brother in Nigeria, I still have not mastered the art of travelling light; I take so much and almost always end up forgetting what I want and packing what I never use.

Just because I thought I might run late, I called a taxi which turned back 5 minutes into the journey because I had forgotten my phone – all my appointments and contacts are in that thing, so I was glad that I did not use public transport or else that situation would have been impossible to redeem.

The comfort of having a Flying Blue Silver card – need to travel more – and the trappings of business class meant one could jump queues for check-in and security.

Cane must hit head hard

All went well till one jobs-worthy customs oaf said I could not take my cane on the plane because I did not need it to walk with the metal detector – how much of a foolish talk is that?

I have been through Amsterdam Schiphol Airport about 30 times this year and each time I have take my cane apart into its 4 constituent parts and put it all in the check-in tray, no complains, but today they had a chiropractor loafing around checking people’s backs I suppose.

Here I was mouthing through every ailment I ever had along with the occasional back pain that compels me to use the cane as if I now have to carry around a doctor’s certification that allows me to take a cane through customs.

Anyway, after such vehement remonstration bordering on anger as one begins to recognise the atrocious constrictions of this stifling war on comfort named war on terror, I got my cane, put it together, did the revise strip-tease of putting my things back on and walked away with a huff – as one of the customs ladies who had a semblance of humanity in her sinews gave me a smile.

Then off to the KLM lounge where the ladies at the reception succoured me and told me the fact that they had to suffer these indignities twice a day as part of their working at the airport, I suddenly did not feel too sorry for myself.

It was night to be addressed by name as I was served on the plane, a bit of turbulence and the view over the Pyrenees was as magnificent as you could get of any view from the air and then 10 extra degrees of Celsius warmth, one would not want to be anywhere else but in Barcelona.

Hotel, not hell

When I arrived at the hotel which was fully-booked from the Microsoft contact site but available through a full package booking on lastminute.nl which is become a neat way to book holidays lately, I was informed I would have a top-floor room with amazing views of Barcelona, I suspected I was being sold crap, but I had to see the room first.

I could hardly get my luggage into the room and this was with the help of the bellboy, single-bed and window only a balcony I could not reach, views of Barcelona – my foot! There was no way I would spend 8 nights in this shack of a pretend-penthouse squeeze.

Meanwhile, the reception had called up for my passport which the bellboy took away for a photocopy to be made; I called reception and asked for a bigger room, first I was given the spiel about standard single rooms and I offered to pay the extra cost to be upgraded; I think the bellboy informed them that I had offered a generous tip so I got another room, probably triple the size with a balcony that I could access and even sit 2 other guests – at no extra charge.

As usual, if you do not ask, you might as well suffer in silence and be eaten up by the utter inconvenience.

Wireless helpless

I got online as reception feigned complete ignorance about the WiFi service which had me calling the Swisscom helpdesk where a competent lady called Barbara took my call from Portugal and we both did the troubleshooting that indicated there were problems with DNS which we resolved after about 20 minutes on the phone.

I decided to go for a walk and had reception give me an idea of my bearings, the metro station was just across the road and getting a ticket required a bank card which I swiftly retrieved from the hotel.

And the ticket machine swallowed my card – I consciously said to myself, this is not want I need in order not to say the clichéd “Just what I need”.

Thankfully, the transport security guys were there and they got to station supervisor to retrieve my card before my holiday went tunnelling into desperate despair.

The night had only begun, I should be out for dinner soon and one can only say Barcelona would be fun.

Walsall born in Warsaw pact

Cities, names and airports

Once and for all, I decided to deal with the confusion especially when a silly immigration officer at London Heathrow Airport was trying to be smart and catch me out by asking if I was born in Warsaw when it says Walsall in my passport and then saying Walsall, London?

Walsall is near Birmingham; sometimes these people really make you want to blurt out a derogatory expletive followed with a throttling of the neck.

But then, the many times I have said I was born in Walsall, people have automatically said Warsaw, Poland and I have had to explain why the cities sound alike but are almost a thousand miles apart.

So having a long weekend from work because the company has compulsory holidays on Friday and Monday, my mind went into overdrive as to what to do this weekend.

Get off the beaten track and do something new, I thought, check for a good Accor hotel and then flights, by the time I knew it, the hotel taxi was picking me up from the Warsaw Frederic Chopin Airport (Formerly Okecie Airport) at the spanking new Terminal 2.

This place was not like that dreadful, rotten, horrible and atrocious London Heathrow which is patently not fit for purpose, the atmosphere was easy only that we missed strains of the piped music of Chopin.

I should start planning my itinerary though I would not be able to do either Auschwitz or Treblinka which are miles away from Warsawa, but I would do my best to get a good view of the Poles and hopefully would not run into those twins.

Irksome airport landings

Baggage handling

Despite all the automation and technology involved in baggage handling at airports, the end of the chain still requires the man-handling of luggage to and from the cargo hold of planes.

Sometimes I have looked from inside the plane how bags get thrown, dumped or dropped, even with the occasional panicky official who has just noticed some baggage is about to leave on the wrong plane.

There was one instance, a suitcase was dropped a good 2 metres from the belt to the ground, I could say I felt ever bit of that drop and the possible consequences, as 7 years ago when the mishandling of my luggage by a no-frills airline had my laptop in pieces. I have not done no-frills since that episode.

The herd embarks

What really gets to me is the herd mentality of boarding and disembarking from a plane, the way people rush to get on considering we all have pre-assigned seats, people with seats in the aisles what to be on first and then discomfited by passengers with window seats, as if getting on early means you get to the destination faster.

Keep seat belts fastened ignored

Then on landing, as the aircraft taxies to a gate, the seat belt fastened lights are still on and some cretin gets up to open the overhead lockers to get his stuff, at which time other members of the cretin club get up to do the same whilst the plane is yet to come to a complete standstill.

At one time the cabin crew had to bark the order for all to sit down and fasten their seat belts. One wonders how getting up first to get your stuff is going to help you get out of the airport first when a majority of luggage is checked in, though I would not be surprised if some had also checked in their brains and with their manners, consideration and smartness.

Then just as the plane comes to a halt, lights still warning to keep seat belts fastened, they still get up and open the lockers grab their stuff and the wait standing for possibly 5 to 10 minutes before they are able to disembark and there is no way they would get their stuff from baggage reclaim any earlier than those who have been patient to get off the plane gracefully.

Mobiles off planes

It looks like impatience and stupidity vying for prominence in their heads.

Beyond that, there is that other herd stampede that occurs the moment we arrive, all mobile phones go off and everyone is calling arranging meets, dinner, coffees and so on, all these can wait till they are out in the arrival lounge but the fact that too many people are complete addicts to information and slaves of electronic communication; it is a blessing that a flight still has the sanctity of a mobile phone free zone even though the science of not using mobile phones on planes is suspect.

Methinks mobile phones should be checked in and not allowed in hand luggage though there are other security consequences for that, the rule to keep them switched off completely is good enough for me, it should be extended to say they should never be switched on in a plane.

In fact, the plane should be a Faraday Cage of sorts which is let down only in emergencies.

Kids at play

The final peeve is at baggage reclaim, what has been checked in is probably quite heavy luggage, but then you find that kids are allowed to run around the baggage belt and stand in the way of bigger people who really know their business about standing there.

In some cases, there is a complete lapse in discipline; the kids get on the belt, in one case the kid was pulling off stuff twice his size and the rotten parents proudly looked on at the initiative of their devil kid.

In exasperation, just before the kid gets mangled in the conveyor belt mechanism, one helps giving a look that could kill the parents only that the result of their deaths might leave one the guardian of an orphaned devil kid - one cannot live with that.

Once out of the airport, the relief that one has been separated from these crazy people is the joy of being on holiday or having returned to home sweet home.