Remind me to check the Heathrow website next time I plan to travel through there, lest they decide to do some major unveiling of their latest screwed up infrastructure project. Had I done that, I would have opted to rent a car or something to get to Milan.
Off the plane, through Terminal 3, to the bus, to Terminal 5, to passport control, and into the first of many queues. Security, using their fancy new system upstairs, was all screwed up because the "automatic tray returns" would frequently jam and require intervention by the company that built them. We waited just under 1 hour to get to the head of the security line.
Then, a small-ish (10"x20"x4") tray is placed in front of me by an attendant. I wear my glasses on red-eyes, and those, including every other potential object containing metal had to be placed in this bin. In addition, my bags were stacked on top of this bin, such that one bin represented one traveler (this, according to the kind fellow, was the new policy at Terminal 5)
I asked for a hand inspection of my film and was denied. I rapidly protested (I had a bunch of 1600 in there, and even in the X ray bag I'm paranoid), but was told that unless I wanted to junk it in the designated rubbish bin, it had to be X rayed. Given the queue, I made what might have been the worst decision of my trip (we'll see what happens when I get the work developed this week) and sent them on through. I was assured that these machines were safe up to ISO 3200 film (how the heck can they see the items in the bags then?!), and that all would be OK.
These new baggage machines are completely automated, with bags flagged for further inspection automatically removed from the pickup queue and routed over to a secure central area (two lines share a central area). As I guessed, my bags were kicked out (maybe the lead has something to do with it) and sent for further inspection.
Shoeless, beltless, and glasses-less, I waited in the surly line for 25 minutes. Four people were in front of me, including a dementia-addled Balkan man trying to get home with the help of a skycap and intepreter (who had large quantities of American cosmetics in his backpack), two extremely agitated Germans who clearly spent a months pay on Duty Free Booze, an Indian couple trying to get through a case of water and various other illegal items, and me, the evil photographer.
When it was my turn, all of the items had to be unpacked. Backpack completely unpacked, lenses removed from protective cases, lens caps removed from lenses for visual inspection, and each item swabbed and placed in a handy orange tote to be quarantined until proven that they were in fact not explosive. 6 Cokin filter holders? Opened, swabbed, and inspected. Tiffen velcro pouches? Opened, swabbed, inspected. Camera? Opened, swabbed, and inspected (she did swab the grip, I think I might have lost my temper if she dare touch the shutter). All in all, there were 28 items that were removed and swabbed, which does not include the change of clothes, small ziplock of chapstick and other sundries, my mp3 player, and so on.
After the explosive screen came up negative (clearly she was unable to detect my impending nuclear meltdown), I was permitted to wear my glasses again and repack all of my items.
Overal Grade: F-
). It produced an assymetrical slat situation, the plane rolled over and crashed; fatal to all 271 aboard.
