Picture this….New Year’s Day, four thirty in the morning and we are in a large room surrounded by dozens of other bleary eyed people.

It’s very quiet as most of us are only half awake.

I look around and see most people are half undressed, shoes off, all top clothes being taken off and nothing to break the silence except the shuffling of bare feet.  Dave and I begin to undress and pile our clothes and shoes into the plastic box we have been ordered to use.

Have the Whalleys been to an all night orgy?  Have we been arrested and being checked in to prison?  No, we are at Vancouver airport, waiting to go through security.

Going on vacation, by air, used to be fun.  Exciting to go to the airport and in an hour or so be winging your way to somewhere exciting.  Not so today.  Air travel now has become a bit of a nightmare with all the security measures at the airport.

Arriving a minimum of three hours for an international flight seems rather unnecessary, but it takes most of that time to be “processed”.  I am all in favour of security measures but is it really working?  Do the powers that be really think things through?

At security we have to turn in tiny manicure scissors, nail files, even a comb with a sharp handle.  However, knitting needles are quite acceptable and, on many flights, we are allowed to carry on our duty free liquor to stow under our seats.  How many of us have seen western movies where the cowboy smashes the bottle to use as a weapon.  Isn’t a bottle of liquor, with a rag stuffed in the neck and lit by a match, a home made bomb and fifteen inch knitting needles seem far more lethal than a two inch pair of nail scissors.

After the indignity and inconvenience of going through security, we then make our way down to the gate and wait to board.  Here we are allowed to buy fresh water to take on board.  However, in a recent trip to Chile, we were stopped again, on the walkway to enter the plane, bags searched yet again and our water confiscated because we had opened it and split it between two bottles.  No amount of arguing that we had already been searched and had just bought a new bottle would allow me to keep the water.

On board the plane, security seems to differ depending how much you paid.  If you sit in economy, it is plastic knives and forks, plastic drinking glasses and disposable food containers.  If you upgrade, you get real china, steel silverware and real glassware.  They also give you as much complimentary alcohol as you want, does this mean that the people who pay more do not suffer from lack of judgement. So, if you want to pull a hijack, just go business class.

In the course of our recent trip to South America and Easter Island, we experienced quite a few airport departures.  The differences in attitudes and security levels was amazing.

I think the most security conscious was Houston.  Like all the U.S. airports we have travelled through, their security clearance is verging on the absurd.  We were unfortunate to be just one of three large planes all boarding at the same time.  Security was a nightmare.  I felt very sorry for the attendants who were trying to get this huge amount of people through in a reasonable time.

People just do not listen or read notices.  Signs for what is not allowed through are in abundance but most people just do not take any notice of them, so the attendants were constantly calling out what to do.  Because there was such a huge amount of people being processed, there was a shortage of the xray trays, so they were asking that large bags and shoes not be put in the trays, but just put on the conveyor.  Nobody listened and the attendants were constantly lifting these articles out of the trays.  People were not removing outer clothing, or shoes, so getting through the screening was constantly held up.

In Houston, as most US ports, they have the body scanner.  This has a set of footprints painted on the floor, so you know where to stand, so why do people face the opposite way?  You get the feeling that some people just are not fit to travel.

As a complete opposite, the security at Easter Island’s small airport is nil.  The island is still completely unspoiled but the tiny airport receives a large plane with over three hundred tourists, every day, so eventually it will probably succumb to development, which would be such a shame.

The airport is one large room with an old fashioned xray machine to pass your baggage through, to ensure that you are not taking artefacts off the island.  After this you proceed to the desk where they book you in and take luggage.  You are then free to wander through an unmanned door to the one and only gate, which is all in the open air but has a cover, for shade.

The only people attending are on the xray machine and the desk.  Anyone is free to roam into the airport and through to the airfield, nobody is looking at passports, checking to see if you are carrying bombs, water or nail files.  Clothes and shoes are not removed for inspection.  The plane we boarded was going to Houston, so is flying over US territory, but I guess the US haven’t realized this.

I love to travel but airports do not any joy to the journey.  It is horrifying to think of the cost involved for all this and does it actually deter terrorists, I doubt it.