CAT I Takeoff

I'll tell you about the circular yurt construction shortly, but today I couldn't pass up this story about a cat that escaped from its carrier before take-off on an Air Canada flight. Air Canada allows small pets to be carried in the passenger cabin, provided that they remain in approved pet carriers that fit on the floor under a seat. The door to the carrier was, according to the passenger 'inadvertently opened' while the carrier was being stowed. My initial guess was that the passenger wanted to give Ripples a quick snuggle before shoving it under the seat, but apparently security video shows that the CATSA inspectors who opened the cage for security screening did not secure the latch. In any event Ripples saw an opportunity and fled.

So you have an airplane, which is not a really large place, and a cat, which is not a large animal and the other had to be found inside the one. That took them a while because the cat had done what cats do and found the smallest, warmest most inaccessible compartment in the whole aircraft: an avionics bay. This is the airplane equivalent of getting into the computer rack and curling up on top of the server. Or sleeping on top of an old-fashioned TV inside the entertainment unit. They had to access the avionics through an exterior panel to remove the cat and then to ensure that it wasn't a trained terrorist attack cat that had left a little explosive payload in there--or a non-terrorist cat that had simply chewed on something or left a payload of another variety--they took a further delay to inspect the avionics.

I thought Air Canada didn't carry pets in the winter months, but here's their pet policy. They accept them in the cabin, as checked luggage and as unaccompanied cargo. They do have seasonal restrictions on pets in the baggage compartment to keep pets from being baked or frozen during ground handling.

I stand by my earlier statement that there should be a program in place whereby a passenger wishing to have a cat at their destination registers the one they have, drops it off at the airport and on arrival is given one of a similar size and colour, to enjoy for the duration of their stay.

Pipeline Around the World

We're flying a pipeline today. The pipeline has already been built, so presumably the owners know where it is, but they want pictures of it, and we get paid to take pictures, so we fuel up and go. The flight is a little unusual in that we're training a new camera operator, so there are three people on board. But the more the merrier, as far as I'm concerned.

Linguistic aside I wrote the previous sentence and then tabbed over to my notes file to see what in particular I had to say about the pipeline flight. By pure coincidence, while I scrolled past the random thoughts at the beginning of the file, looking for the flight-by-flight notes, my eyes found something I wrote months ago about the expression I had just used. The grammar of the more the merrier isn't explainable through modern English grammar. The adverbial use of the is a relic of Old English þy, which was originally the instrumentive case of the neuter demonstrative þæt. So it literally meant something like "in what degree more, in that degree merrier." I think it's cool that I randomly use expressions of such ancient lineage and my language happily accommodates them. The people who have little fits about "hopefully" or "could care less" really don't have a leg to stand on. English has forever been about what people say, not what makes any kind of logical sense.

But merrily and numerously we taxi out for takeoff and persuade the controller to give us a departure clearance. There's a double delay and I wonder if I've managed to file the flight along some airway that is not authorized for use on Tuesdays, but the controllers are just puzzling out where to fling a CVFR flight. The first controller seemed to understand that I was CVFR, but there was a controller handoff between my calling for clearance them receiving it from centre and the new controller gave me an IFR departure. I don't really care. IFR or VFR I'm going to take off, switch to the next frequency, and follow their vectors and altitude restrictions until I'm in my photo blocks, so I accept the departure and follow it after I'm given a take-off clearance. The next controller gives me a vector that is close enough to direct my entry point that it doesn't matter, and I'm cheerfully following it when he calls back.

"Are you IFR or controlled VFR?" he asks.

"I'm on a controlled VFR flight plan."

"Have you been IFR at any point today?"

"I accepted a published IFR departure."

I think he asked me if I considered myself IFR right now. I tried to give him a professional and aviation-speak version of, "Seeing as I'm pointed in the direction I want to go, climbing towards the altitude I want, I really don't care." If we didn't have the op spec for extended single-pilot IFR duty days it might matter, but as it is it makes literally no difference to me. The only functional difference between VFR and IFR in cruise on a nice day is whether I have to read back clearances or not. And in busy airspace where most traffic is IFR, I often read back VFR clearances to fit in with the crowd. Technically under IFR the controller not me is responsible for my terrain and traffic, but it's not like I'm really abdicating those responsibilities, especially as I can see the terrain.

It shouldn't make that much difference to the controller, either. Under CVFR he's responsible for separating me from other traffic. That's the whole purpose of CVFR: to allow VFR traffic in airspace where IFR separation is required. But I don't mind. I wish I knew the words to make this controller happy. He tells me I'm CVFR and I'm happy with that. He hnds me off to another frequency.

The pipeline goes into the foothills, so that's where we're working. Usually I get a clearance for such and such photo blocks, for such an such a block altitude and then I just work, without a peep out of the controllers. But this lady won't give me a block altitude. I have to ask for every altitude change and heading change, and as often as not it's denied. There's traffic at that altitude, I can't have it. We end up skipping some lines for cloud and other lines because we just can't get by the controller. The thing about filing photo blocks is that theoretically they are supposed to give you the whole block, yours, exclusively. It never really works that way, and I wouldn't really want it to, but this controller doesn't get what is going on.

If I want to fly direct Calgary at 11,000' and there's traffic preventing me from doing so, I can continue towards Calgary at 9000' until the traffic is by me, then accept the climb to 11,000' and I have been inconvenienced only a tiny bit. If my direct Calgary course is 150 degrees and I'm restricted to south for five minutes, I've still been making progress towards Calgary and not a lot of time has been wasted in the five minutes before the controller says, "cleared direct Calgary." But if I want to fly along a line that starts exactly here and goes to exactly there on a track of 150.27 degrees (yes, my heading is displayed in front of me to two decimal places. I remember thinking +/-5 degrees on the commercial flight test was rigourous) at 11,000', it is completely useless to me to be cleared along it at 9000'. And if I need to turn NOW to get onto the line, a five minute heading restriction is worse than useless, because it will have carried me five minutes away from the start of the line and I have to turn around and go back.

In order to improve efficiency I start calling her a few dots before the end of a line, multitasking with my radio call and my dot tracking to try and get the next turn or next altitude approved before I hit the last dot and am ready to turn. It's a little overloading, as I'm focusing almost all my attention on those little dots and don't have a lot of attention over for the designations of photo blocks. The conversation is supposed to go like this:

Me: "In one mile Dotsmasher One requests left turn to zero eight five at one four thousand seven hundred."

Her: "Dotsmasher One cleared left turn zero eight five degrees at one four thousand seven hundred."

Me: "Left zero eight five degrees at one four thousand seven hundred, Dotsmasher One."

Her: "Readback correct."

Yeah, what is usually me flying around doing what I need to has turned into a four line conversation. And what is really going on includes both operators telling me what I need next and me reading back what they have said if it isn't clear or I think I have forgotten. So sometimes when I ask the controller for an altitude and she approves it I just say "Dotsmasher One." She corrects me snippily when I miss or muss a readback and the second time I apologize with, "Sorry, I'm just not feeling as though I'm IFR today." I'm turning and swooping and visually negotiating hills. There's a pause as she talks to other traffic then she calls me back just to deride me for that comment. "It doesn't matter," she says, "whether you are VFR or IFR you must always read back assigned altitudes and headings." I just bite my tongue on that one. It's a nice sunny day and she's stuck in a box with a screen while I get to fly in the mountains. I do my best to read everything back and am glad when our progress is sufficient that I am passed on to the next controller.

I give him a request based on the town I know we are working our way towards, then I realize I'm overhead it. Despite the cranky clearances we've been making good progress. The new controller finally gives us a block of airspace and leaves us alone. We keep flying along the pipeline, watching the scenery go by. There are some clouds on the horizon, but we hope we can complete the job before they cast shadows on our work. The senior operator says he wants someone to build a pipeline around the world so we can fly it, segment by segment, all the way around the world. I'd like to do that too, but I tell him he'd have to give me a bit more notice of where he wanted to land so I could arrange customs clearance. We're almost finished when clouds arrive and we're done for the day. We spiral down out of the sky towards the nearest airport for fuel.

The FSS there has a single in the circuit but no other traffic, and I let him know how many minutes I'll be in descent before arriving. I descend over a nearby navaid, then head for the airport when I can arrive at circuit altitude at a reasonable speed and descent rate. He points me out as arriving traffic, calling me a Piper Cherokee. I'm not usually too picky about what controllers call me, as long as they call me cleared to land, but I correct that one. If you're looking for a single and a twin turns up on final you may think you have a conflict.

Airports mostly look the same once you're on the ground, even if they are quite large, because you can't really see that far. We taxi to the self-serve fuel pumps and I shut down and fill out the logbook for the flight. The operator discovers that he has forgotten the company credit card, and his personal credit card doesn't work. Can I possibly ...?

I have an insane credit limit from all those years of ferrying airplanes around North America, so I toss them my credit card as I head to the terminal to find a washroom. I open the door to the terminal and see that there are airline counters and uniformed security inside. I have my pilot licence with me, but I need to make sure I can get back out again. I wave down one of the security guys and make sure he'll let me out. He tells me the code to get back out the door, and says it's written on the outside. Oops, didn't see it. I use the washroom, pick up the payphone to file an ordinary VFR flight plan home, and go back out the door. The code is written on the outside in teeny, tiny letters I didn't see. The senior operator is coming in as I go out. I tell him the code and he says, "I know." He's been here before.

It's funny these little airports. They're all the same to me. There's nothing in the CFS to indicate which ones have which level of security. It's not a function of runway length or altitude or type of air traffic service or of any other published datum. You land and look for somwhere to dump the contents of your bladder, and at some that means watering the grass at the edge of the taxiway while at others it means running the gauntlet of CATSA and throngs of passengers at the x-ray machines. It's disorienting, and without local knowledge you have to be on your toes to walk in the correct door, know the correct codes, have the correct documents and get back to your airplane.

In the meantime a small airliner has landed, but it doesn't need the fuel pumps. We all get back in the airplane and take off before the airliner needs out. We fly home. It takes a quarter the time to get back as it did to get here, because we're not circling around to get on the right lines, and we're talking only to traffic on 126.7 until it's time to talk to the airport controllers.

I land and taxi in, and the boss is waiting with a cheque for the exact amount of the fuel. The operator called ahead with the amount. Fastest expense reimbursement ever.

Red Deer Airport

The airport at Red Deer has two good paved runways, some good taxiways and at least one "wait, are you sure there wasn't an X on this?" taxiway. That's Delta. I was glad that I had specifically checked NOTAMs for the airport before coming here, so that I could be reasonably confident that I wasn't about to fall into a pit. This must be why the controller offered me the backtrack yesterday.

There is a proper airport terminal here, with washrooms and gates (okay, gate: I think there's only one) and PA announcements and CATSA security screening. In front of the terminal is a large paved apron with a big yellow square painted on it. The square is about the size of a B737 and it's the secure area of the airport. When there is a scheduled carrier parked there, no one without a badge or a security escort may cross the line. When there's no scheduled carrier, anyone may walk or taxi anywhere on the apron. When I first arrived at the airport there was a B737 parked in the square, but the FSS folk cheerfully assured me that it was just a charter, not scheduled, so the line was not in force. Because it's so much more practical to commit terrorist acts on a scheduled flight than with a private charter that operates on your schedule, I guess.

From the airside, the terminal has the name of the airport and the field elevation written on it and there is the word enter over one door. The other door goes to the FSS in the tower cab on top of the terminal. The FSS personnel don't go in and out that door, though, they use a wooden walkway with handrails that goes along the roof to the groundside, and then down a set of metal stairs. It must be a chilly gauntlet to run in the winter, but the summer weather is quite nice, not getting below ten or so overnight. The metal stairs end in a fenced cage with a coded entry door, next to the airport staff parking. From there a secure fence with a combination lock runs along the edge of the airfield. (Pilots: your first guess at the code is correct, and there's a sticker on both sides of the gate that gives the name of the four digit number clearly enough that it could be googled). Not to worry about the security of the airfield however, because the security fence ends a couple of hangars down the ramp and anyone can just walk or drive onto the field. Just like Miami.

As I'm leaving the airport at eleven p.m. a man comes down the stairs to his car. I ask if he's leaving for the night or just a shift change. I thought I remembered that it was 24 hour here, but I could be wrong. Eleven is a common time for services to stop. It's just a shift change, though. He explains that overnight when Edmonton City Centre tower closes, Red Deer Radio steps in and looks after that frequency. I told him that I had assumed it went to a pool of people in a room in Edmonton somewhere. He says it used to, but this is new. It's not a bad idea. It gives Red Deer Radio enough work to justify them being open twenty-four hours.

Mobile Device

My morning e-mail included the usual notice from Air Canada urging me to check in online, or on my mobile device. Hey, I have a mobile device now. I think I'll give this a try.

The Internet in the Whitehorse hotel is excruciatingly slow, but I manage to click on the "or check in with your mobile device" link in the e-mail. The page starts to load. Oddly, it seems to be loading the regular Air Canada website, not a page optimized for the mobile, but I give it time. I go and brush my teeth and then return to see, yes it is the regular Air Canada website. It is not the check-in page, but a page of instructions on how to check in online, including a section on how to check in with a mobile. All I have to do is go to mobile.aircanada.com, it tells me. I click on those words. Uh I try to click on those words. Although the URL of the website is given multiple times on the page, in a contrasting colour, in no case is it a link.

What were they thinking? All I can come up with is that they were concerned that non-mobile users would attempt to check in using that link and then would be confused when it didn't work. Instead they have decided to inconvenience people who are actively and accurately trying to check in with a mobile device. I can't quite believe they made that decision. I enter the URL in the Safari navigation bar. And it returns an error message. It says Uniquement les dispositifs WML sont autorises a utiliser cette application. Hmm. I was not at that moment familiar with the abbreviation WML, so I assumed it was a French term I didn't know for mobile web-enabled device. I've since learned that it is the same abbreviation in French or English and represents a mobile version of HTML. (Technically of XML, but more people are going to know what HTML is). Either way the error message is telling me that that my device was not qualified to access this site.

I honestly don't know if it is or not. It's a mobile device. It can receive e-mail. But does it use WML? Google found me this unanswered forum question from someone who had the same problem with the same airline almost a year ago. Which is odd, because the feature has a "NEW!" flag on it.

But one way or the other, I want to check in. I know now it would be faster to do it at the gate, but this is technology! Let me make it work! So I go back to the original e-mail and try the "web check-in" option. After more tedious loading I'm back to the Air Canada site, and a page giving me instructions on how to check in on the web, with a link to "check in now." Again, why did it not give me that link in the e-mail, with options to get instructions? I guess because someone who needs instructions on filling out an online form isn't savvy enough to choose to ask for instructions. I mean, it's a form: how hard can it be?

I click "check in now" and get the message "Safari can't open the page because the address is invalid." I don't believe this, so I reclick the link, and this time it works. I'm going to pretend the first time was a hallucination. I have to enter my name, my airport of origin, and my destination. And now the form requires my Aeroplan number or booking reference number. Firetruck! If I go back to the e-mail I'll have to go through this all over again. And did I enter my Aeroplan number when I booked this? I would ordinarily, but I booked it on my colleague's computer without logging in properly, because I rely on my computer or the memory stick to remember things like frequent flyer passwords for me. Fortunately it successfully looks up the booking based on my Aeroplan number. I must have manually entered it. I click continue.

"Please wait while we prepare your request."

It gives me a seat assignment, asks for my number of checked bags, and has me confirm that I am checking no bicycles, firearms, surfboards or antlers. And then it asks if I would like to receive the boarding pass via mobile e-mail. I say yes, enter the e-mail address they already have, and click continue.

It tells me I'm done. I know better. You're not done until you get the boarding pass. I check my e-mail. It has arrived. Load, load, load ... there's a simple one-line e-mail with my flight numbers and itinerary. And then "click the link below to receive your electronic boarding passes. You could also be asked to display this message to airport security." So I leave that message on the screen and open the link below in a new window. Each boarding pass is a little magic eye picture with my seat number on it. I practice a couple of times displaying the boarding pass and the e-mail. I turn off the device and turn it back on again to make sure it's still there, still working. Okay, I can do this.

When I check my bag at the counter, the CSA asks if I have printed a boarding pass. I say no, but I have it on my iPod, and start to show her. She doesn't need to see it. She prints out my bag claim stickers and gives them to me stuck to a piece of paper that is blank on one side and has Warsaw Convention baggage liability rules printed on the other. She sticks the tags to the side with the writing on, not the blank side. Why? Because had I not claimed to have a boarding pass on my iPod, there would have been a boarding pass printed on that side. So the savings accrued to Air Canada so far amount to the ink on the boarding pass.

And now for security. I turn on the iPod and have my magic eye picture all ready to display. I get my big computer out of its bag, put it, my carry-on and my jacket on the x-ray belt and show the iPod to the checker who asks for my boarding pass. Ta-da! I hold up the iPod. The screener takes it and turns it sideways to look at. The gravity feature in the device rotates the display, cutting off the image. "This is a boarding pass?" she asks dubiously.

"That's what Air Canada told me."

She shows the device to another security person. He says, "you have to look at the e-mail. Just make sure it has the right date and airport." No problem. I take the device back and switch screens to the e-mail. There's free wireless in this airport -- I was using it earlier to look at web pages in a different window. So when I switch to the e-mail it tries to reload the page. And it fails. It has the e-mail, but it's an HTML e-mail and the picture has to download from Air Canada's server and it won't. So now I don't have the e-mail and I can't get to it either. I go back out of security and mess with it for fifteen minutes, trying to get it to display. Finally I go back to the Air Canada counter where they print me a paper boarding pass. Security likes that one much better.

I continue to fiddle with the iPod in the departure area until I get the e-mail to display again. As a final gesture of embracing new technology I attempt to board the aircraft by showing my magic eye picture. "We don't have the scanner, do you have the e-mail?" At least she knows what it is. I show the e-mail. It works this time, and she lets me on. I absolutely could have faked that e-mail with less trouble than it took to obtain and display it. It would have got me through security and onto the tarmac, ready to wreak havoc with ... okay maybe Air North isn't a big terrorist target, but I'd have been there!

I did get home. But it's clear that my expectations, Air Canada, Apple, Safari and horrible hotel internet combined into a not-so-good customer experience. I'll try mobile check in again sometime when I have some more iPod-specific software, like a better e-mail program and something to do screen captures. But I think when the fun of complaining about it wears off, I'll go back to the method that takes less time and doesn't require me to hold and hand off a small valuable item in a busy area while burdened with luggage. It's easier to have the iPod stored safely and wave around a piece of easily replaceable paper.

Highway and Ravens

I hang out in the Regina airport for a bit, before I go through security. I buy postcards. And then some bizarre female hormonal fluctuation requires me to buy cute things. It must be some chemical mechanism designed to protect babies or something, but it is seriously miswired. I bought a fuzzy little Canada Goose stuffed toy and a girlie purse, neither of which I have any use for, especially in Grande Cache. But they are cute. And they were even on sale. At least they both fit in my carry on.

Did I mention I'm having a bad technology day? The lifting handle broke off my main suitcase, and the extendable handle snapped on one side. That's checked now, so I don't have to worry about it until lately, but it turns out that I still have my car key in my pants pocket and my coin purse too. I have a routine of where I put everything, and I never carry these things in my pockets, which is why I forget to take them out of my pocket before going through security. So I get beeped by the scanning machine. I apologize, go back, empty my pockets into a tray, go through again without beeping, and then try to recapture my interrupted routine. I do. Right down to not picking up the key and coins that I never have in my pockets and therefore aren't part of my reclaiming from the bins at airport security routine. Fortunately I remember them before the flight is called (because I'm playing with my cute new purse) and when I go back, security has kept them safe for me. Yay for CATSA.

My carry-on fits in the overhead bin, of both the Rj and the connecting Dash-8, although I have to convnce the flight attendant that it will. Flights are both quick and uneventful. The landing on the second flight is good enough that the flight attendant actually looks up in surprise and mentions it to me. I'm sitting in 1C, right in front of her jumpseat. Someone else is starting a good landing streak. I was going to tease the pilots that they should land harder so people can tell we're down, but I didn't see them. I had to go and rent a car. You cross the street to do that at Edmonton.

The Hertz counter is right in the middle. I give my name and say I have a reservation. As I start the paperwork, I mention that my coworker will be driving the car back. The agent doesn't like that idea. "He has to be here to sign the agreement."

I explain that the car exchange will take place in Grande Cache, where there is not a Hertz office. She is not sympathetic. I ask to take a copy of the form and have the other driver sign it and fax it in before driving the car. This won't do because Hertz has to verify the driving licence. I suggest that a copy of that be faxed, too. She counters that the copy could have been made just before the licence was suspended. Okay, what if I had an RCMP officer notarize the copy? She's not budging. I can tell by now that the Hertz agent wouldn't rent a car to her own deity if He wasn't able to produce the documentation she wanted. I tell her that's not acceptible to me, and I go and try the other counters.

"If I rent a car here, can my coworker drive it also without additional paperwork?"

The answer ranges from "Yes, but we only have a Mustang convertible," to "Yes, but we don't have any cars." Avis is incredulous that Hertz won't rent me the car. So this is policy is not based in any kind of law or Alberta insurance requirement. I call the Hertz nationwide line in hopes of finding someone who is permitted to think. But I get exactly the same answer.

"Why is a driver's licence verification from the RCMP not sufficient?"

"The RCMP doesn't have anything to do with Hertz." Neither will I, if I can help it. I ask to escalate the call to the next level. While I'm on hold for that I wander over to the Avis counter with a business card and ask to be put on a standby list for an available car.

The next level up on the customer service hierarchy is no more help. We do locate the nearest Hertz offices to Grande Cache, a couple of hours drive in each case. I suppose I can drive my coworker there, then both drive back. I imagine most people just ignore whose name is on the contract and Hertz' silly rules. But it's rough country. I don't want to have a car I rented hit an animal or something and not be insured.

I go back to the Avis counter. "You could have a car back any time now, right?"

"We have one right now."

"Thank you!" I beam. "Just a moment while I go and let Hertz know I won't need their car." Pause. "EVER!" I do that, and I'm on my way.

It's about five hours drive to Grande Cache. I skirt Edmonton itself and get onto the northwest-bound Yellowhead Highway. It's an excellent road: divided highway, two lanes each way, good pavement. Alberta has money to spend on infrastructure. Just past Hinton, where I had dinner at a Greek restaurant, I take a left turn onto highway 40. It still has reasonably good pavement, but is a narrower two lane road with almost no shoulder. I can tell before I see the yellow road signs that I need to be very, very careful of wildlife on this road. I'm in a small rental car in a wilderness park, and there are likely moose, elk, deer and bear around here, all itching to cross the road, or just to wander along it.

Now, a wild animal encountering a road doesn't have the same thought processes as a human who has to cross a road, or even as a cat. I think a cat gets the concept of the road being a strip of danger that it has to traverse quickly without being caught by the cars. But a deer? A deer does not get the concept of traffic. A deer will bounce onto the road in front of you, then bounce towards you, then stand stock still, then bounce away, and then bounce right back in front of you again. Deer would not score well in Frogger.

It's not dark yet, but it will be twilight soon and I have an hour and a half to drive on this road. Watching the road and the shoulders for wildlife is a bit like doing an instrument scan while flying. Left ditch, road, right ditch, road, left ditch, road, right ditch, road. I turn a corner and spot my first wildlife. It's a raven, much smarter than a deer, and it hops off the road as I approach. My line of vision passes beyond it and lights on a group of several more ravens, all standing on the corpse of what looks like an elk. I wonder whether the animal was struck on the road and scrambled off but didn't quite make it to the trees before dying, or whether it was struck and killed, and either the driver or the highways people just hauled it to the side of the road.

I'll bet this car wasn't tested with the moose crash test dummy that Volvos are. (If you don't read that whole report, you should at least know the best line: "In Australia, tests with kangaroo dummies are hard to generalize due to a very dynamic centre-of-gravity." Boing, boing, boing!

The same scene is repeated about 30 kilometres later, on the other side of the road. Another dead deer or elk, hard to tell, lies in the long grass, with ravens feasting on it. The third dead hulk I encounter by the side of the road is that of a demolished car. I wonder if I'm far enough north now that all carcasses, animal mineral or vegetable, are not hauled away, merely pushed off to the side and left there. You get far enough north and at an airstrip you will find the remains of any airplanes that have ever crashed there, either on the apron or in the bush just past the area that is cleared at the sides of the runway.

I arrive at Grande Cache without having hit any elk, ravens or other vehicles just before dark. Phew.

Aww rats! As I write this up I'm watching a movie, and what was either a flubbed line or a script error just spolied a good laugh. The movie investigators are looking for someone who birthplace they have discovered was in the former Yugoslavia. One agent is telling the others that he has already reached contacts in the relevant agencies in "Slovenia, Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina." A funny jab at the continued balkanization of the Balkans, and would have made the agent look smart, being able to keep up with all that too except that we know Bosnia and Herzegovina to be the name of one country. To emphasize the length of the list, the line should have been "... and Bosnia and Herzogovina." It's a Canadian movie, too, I'm pretty sure, because part of it is set in Iqaluit. A Canadian version of Outbreak with a weird mafia twist. I'm going to assume the writer got it right, the actor didn't know that B&H was one country, and the editor, or whatever you call that job in a movie, missed it.

Appropriately enough, the movie featured an ancient disease being spread by northern birds feasting on a corpse.

A Little Respect

One of the most common complaints about security is the rudeness of the screeners. I typed out a whole lot of theorizing on customer service in the US and Canada, southern USA hospitality, the British class system, French culture, the effect of competition on corporate attitudes towards customer service, and the public face of police services. But in the end I deleted it most of it. Simply put, the public expects smiles, please, thank you, and deference. The screeners expect orderly, respectful compliance. Both groups are very disappointed by what actually happens.

Security screeners are stuck with the dual and daunting task of preventing potentially dangerous objects from going onboard aircraft, and acting as the public face of the inconvenience of airports. I imagine that many of them try to face each new customer with cheer, or at least guarded neutrality, but after five hours of scowling, whining, eye-rolling passengers, they're probably doing well not to actually swear back at you. The public are incredibly rude to the screeners. The screeners are rude back. The whole process becomes self-perpetuating pit of nastiness.

My strategy: be nice. If I have to, I pretend that the screeners are behaving as reasonable human beings, and respond accordingly to my fantasies. The aim is for an Academy Award level performance, not sarcastic pseudoniceness. The first step in being nice is to follow the rules. I mean really, the rules don't hurt me. It's a nuisance to get my laptop, my boarding pass, my baggie, my shoes and my parka all organized on the belt, but that nuisance is not the fault of the screener.

I smile and say hello to any screener who looks at me. I say excuse me, and please, if I have a question. I say thank you if they give me an instruction or a bin. If they thank me, I tell them they're welcome. If I discover that I've accidentally packed something I shouldn't have, I apologize, and admit to knowing better. Everyone knows that throwing a tantrum will not result in being able to keep the prohibited item. And I know I feel better after an encounter if I think I've behaved in a civilized manner. It's a game. I score points if the screener is nice back to me.

A little bit of niceness goes a long way, in both directions. Some of the poor screeners are so starved for love that their gratitude shows. Some of them are so hardened in their ways you'd think I swore at them. It's like those studies showing that people are happier when they give money away as opposed to spending it on themselves. Is it my being polite that makes me happy, or someone else's being polite to me?

On a recent trip, I decided to try WestJet's e-Boarding Pass. I followed the instructions on their site and they e-mailed me a boarding pass. Not a boarding pass to be printed out, but a paperless one. At security, I displayed it as instructed on my computer screen. The screener looked at it, looked confused, and called another screener. They told me it was not adequate. It didn't qualify as a boarding pass because it didn't have a barcode.

I went back to the check in area and used a kiosk to get a paper boarding pass. I returned to the screening area and got the same screener. She was openly grateful for my easy acceptance of the original decision. I won't tell you what I got away with because of it.

I wonder if I put a big tinfoil happy face inside the bottom of my carry on, if it would show up as a happy face on the x-ray machine. Maybe I'll try it next trip.

The picture is of a bilingually labelled, CATSA-issue one-litre plastic bag. These are available free in most Canadian airports, from a table in front of security. I've also seen bags for sale in US airports. They should also have a vending machine for little mailing boxes, and postage, so you could mail things you weren't allowed to carry. I think a lot of US airports don't have mailboxes, though, so that would be a barrier.

Everpresent Security

So of course to go to work I have to get on a commercial flight. And to get on a commercial flight I have to go through security. Ahh, security. Everyone besides people who intend to blow up the airplane has an immediate keen interest in people who intend to blow up the airplane not being equipped to do so, but no one looks forward to undergoing security screening.

I'd like to give the TSA some credit today for addressing the public animosity in a blog, Evolution of Security. They publish information, stories, refutations and explanations. When the blog first went online it was inundated with comments and complaints. And I give the official bloggers more credit for acknowledging the problems and responding to the comments.

As I see it, security screening areas are unhappy places because:

• Passengers don't know the rules or refuse to follow them.
• The rules appear illogical, vary from place to place, and are inconsistently applied.
• Submitting to the screening process is irritating, time consuming and can be humiliating.
• Passengers are abusive towards screeners.
• Screeners do not treat passengers with respect.

People in airports are already under stress, because of time pressure, carrying heavy objects and important valuables in the presence of many strangers, the nature of the business that calls for them to travel, and for many a fear of getting on airplanes in the first place. Present these people with one more piece of stress, or simply an available human target, and many of them explode into defiance.

The vast majority of air travellers today are familiar with the basic rules: no weapons or explosives, liquids in one baggie, no jokes about threats, possessions all go through the X-Ray machine while the passenger walks through the scanner. In fact general hatred of security screening by frequent travellers probably has the effect of propagating this knowledge through the non-travelling population. And for the very ignorant, there are large signs and often people reiterating the rules as you approach security.

Passengers have to take responsibility for complying with the rules. Unfortunately many don't, and instead blame the screener for the confiscation of their precious sunblock. The way I see it, if I decide to take the risk of trying to carry my sunblock onboard in a 110 mL container, or if I am too lazy or forgetful to put it in my checked baggage, then I can hardly complain if the rule is enforced. If I were to say, "what? how can my sunblock be a threat to the airplane?" I'd be claiming to be an idiot.

This "how can you do this to elderly/innocent/handicapped/military personnel?" argument is a common one, but one that shows an innocence of the entire security mentality. To do good security you actually must believe that everyone is a threat. Bruce Schneier writes about the security mindset.

If the TSA were to assume everyone was a harmless and innocent passenger, they'd let everyone through with no questions or screening, and while that would be quicker, it wouldn't be screening. So instead they assume everyone wants to blow up the airplane, and it is their job to determine how you plan to do that, despite your innocent appearance. That is, there's nothing to stop you from having an artificial hip AND a gun. If grey-haired ladies with a limp were discovered to get a free pass, then anyone who wanted to defeat security would have a grey-haired lady limp it through the scanner for them.

They are aware that the scanning is irritating and not all that effective and are trying to make it more efficient and effective, with devices like the "naked" scanner. I'm not all that concerned about it, and I freaked out when they took my fingerprint at Disney World. I think that Americans are more body-shy than people of many other nations. Certainly more than Europeans. Canadians vary a lot coast to coast in this respect, with the Southern Ontarians being the biggest prudes.

The inconvenience of the security procedure will decrease as the facilities begin to be designed around having to take off your shoes and unpack your toothpaste and laptop. The inconsistency will always be with us, but a little respect in both directions helps with that. I'll come back to respect tomorrow.