What’s with Air France and Paris?

Factual Questions
1

I would like to quote two incidents that happened recently -

  1. I smoke. Since 911, whenever I have forgotten to get rid of my cigarette lighter, it has been confiscated during security check.

I have therefore learnt NOT to carry a lighter and carry a match instead.

Last month I was boarding an Air France flight from Toronto bound for Paris. At the security check, as usual I transferred everything, including the match, from my person to the tray that goes thro the scanner.

The agent at the security check tells me that matches are not allowed on the plane. He added that if I had a disposable lighter instead, it would not have been a problem, but the match would not be allowed.

I said if I had known this, I would not have put my cigarette lighter in the checked baggage. The agent then picked up a box on top of the scanner which had a good number of disposable cigarette lighters, picked one out and handed it to me saying I could keep it.

At the time I walked off but later when I remembered this incident and found it to be rather odd and something that I could not explain.

a. The agent at the security check does not allow me to take the match.

b. He then picks a lighter from a box that has many.

c. The lighters in the box must be those that have been confiscated from passengers going thro the security check.

d. This implies that cigarette lighters are not allowed through security.

e. Yet I am handed one by the agent and my match is taken away.

I am still :confused::confused:

  1. Next, I had to change planes at CDG Paris for my onward journey.

Remember, I have boarded the Air France flight at Toronto after clearing security.

a. The Airbus lands at CDG in Paris. All passengers get off the plane.

b. I, and as many as can fit, get into a bus waiting on the tarmac where the plane is parked.

c. The doors of the bus close, and we are driven without stopping, and without going out of the airport perimeter, to a gate that leads into the terminal building.

d. We enter the terminal building, go up the stairs and what do I find?

**Another **frisk through a security check!!

The question is why we had to go thro the security check again when, since clearing security at Toronto and boarding their plane, all of us were well insulated from the outside world? :confused::confused:

2

This is normal for an international transfer. Passengers making the transfer arrive from all over the world. The level of security screening of some countries may leave a lot to be desired. The easiest thing to do is to simply rescreen everyone.

3

I can understand that if I flew in on a different airline. In my case, I flew in on Air France and was flying out on Air France.

If they could have me on board on the incoming flight, why do they need to screem me again when I have not been out of their sight?

4

When you fly into the US from out of the country into any US airport, you will have to be rescreened through security before making your domestic connection, even on the same airlines. It is a country specific security issue, not the airport or the airline issue.

WRT to your lighter, what do you expect. They don’t pay those airport security folks much.

5

I order to take a domestic flight after flying in on an international one, one has to clear immigration. The passenger is therefore considered to have been out of the secure area and thus the need for rescreening.

In the case I mentioned, I never left the secure area and was either on the plane itself that flew in or on the bus that transported me to the terminal gate that was already in the secure area.

I am sorry, but I didn’t understand this.

I did not pay anything to the security agent on account of which he did me a favor.

He gave me a cigarette lighter from those that had been obviously confiscated from other passengers. And he didn’t pass it me on the sly or anything. He did it in the full view of the other agents in the area.

6

As for the lighter, I would guess that they saved the lighters they confiscated last week/month/year whenever lighters were prohibited. When they run out, they’ll start confiscating them again. :smiley:

7

Air France does not run the airport.

Same thing happened to me in Bangkok. In that case, a damn engine failed on takeoff. We got bussed back to the same gate we left from, and we still had to go through security again.

The lighter? No idea. Maybe the lighters aren’t confiscated: maybe they do it as a charitable gesture for smokers. They are French, after all. :wink:

8

Maybe Canada allows lighters, but not on US-bound flights? So the lighters would be surrendered by US bound passengers? I recall something about Canada allowing lighters now. The USA is still anal, since they are #1 target.

9

Are you sure the gate you went through into the terminal was still in the sterile area? If you were a passenger flying from Paris where would they have gone through security? Same place you did? If so then you left the sterile area. Some airports aren’t setup to allow people to directly access the sterile part of the terminal from airside.

If you think it’s stupid, consider the stupidity of the following. A Qantas B737 pilot was conducting a pre-flight “walk around” at Broome in Australia. The aircraft was parked quite close to a painted line that marks the boundary where the secure airline area meets the unsecure general aviation area. He stepped over the painted line while looking up at the aircraft tail. Unfortunately he was seen by a security idiot who then informed him that he had to go through security again. This for someone who is obviously a pilot, wearing an aviation security identification card, and the security idiot was watching him the whole time, so he saw that he hadn’t come from the unsecure side but had only stepped over the painted line :rolleyes:.

It’s not designed with logic in mind.

10

Officially, the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority (CATSA) allows lighters in your carry-on (from here):

It seems that they are not allowed in checked baggage, though I doubt it’s something they look for specifically. They also allow safety matches.

The TSA seems a little unsure of what they allow - This page says lighters without fuel are permitted, but ones with fuel are not as carry on, but this page says that lighters are allowed now because they were confiscating too many and they aren’t a security threat.

11

I’m still trying to figure out why security at the Atlanta Hartsfield Airport wouldn’t let me on with two packages of peanut butter cups. Sure they felt melted and they were, but what did they think I molded explosives in chocolate.

Lucky I was way early so I got out of line and ate all four peanut butter cups then went through.

12

The actual law is that passengers are not allowed to carry on the plane whatever it is they are carrying. If you have a lighter, lighters are prohibited. If you have a match, matches are prohibited. By asking the question you broke his routine and collapsed his wave function. Once he said that someone specific was prohibited, the other thing is not. He had the lighters of those passenger that brought lighters and for whom they were prohibited since that’s what they had. They didn’t ask, silly suckers.

13

http://www.aarp.org/content/aarp/en/home/leisure/travel/peter_greenberg/articles/greenberg_tsa_permitted_foods.html
Just remember if you fly Air Canada, the Canadian government now requires “nut-free” zones on all their flights to accommodate those with peanut allergies. Since some people could be allergic to even Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, eat fast before boarding.

14

Ah, the Australian bureaucratic, work to rule, I-can-control-your-life-because-I-can mind. Everything must be done to the letter, or it’s wrong. I still remember waiting in line to renew my driver’s license. The guy in front of me handed in his form to the government clerk, who began reviewing it to process it. He forgot to tick one question on the form. Easy fix. Just hand it back to the guy, he would tick the appropriate box. Sorry, that didn’t fit the standard. She tore up the form right then and there in front of everyone, gave him a new blank form and told him to go to an empty counter, complete the new form per instructions and then get back into the line.

15

How many years in prison did he get?

16

Nut-free zones would take care of terrorism too.

17

You gotta love “security”. Back when Air Canada was still flying from Toronto Island to Ottawa, I had an experience with CATSA (Canadian TSA) there. Walk up to one of the screeners on the sterile side. Ask if there’s a smoking room on this side of security. When she told me “no”, I replied that I would leave the sterile area (no bags anyway), have a smoke in fromt of the terminal, and then reclear security - no big deal, it was a tiny terminal. Instead, she says something to the effect of “I’m about to go on break and have a smoke myself, just come outside with me through the side door, and we’ll come back in after.” Gotta love consistent standards at airports.

18

Well now you have just hit it on the head. I came back from Copenhagen once carrying not much more than myself. We were supposed to land in Montreal, but it was snowed in. So we went on to Toronto. Some passengers disembarked to try to make plans to get back to Montreal. The rest of us stayed seated.

After a while, a flight attendant told us that we would have to get off of the plane and go through Customs. Huh?

When I went through Customs, they asked if I was going to leave anything in Canada. I muttered something about how I wasn’t even going to leave the plane until they made me. They had already heard this two hundred and fourteen times before they got to me. They did not smile. I did not smile either.

Then I got back on my plane and flew to Chicago and then Nashville. The little that I had in baggage arrived a couple of days later.

All of this took place when there were no terrorists in the world except for G. Gordon Liddy & Co. and everyone got along.

19

The Air France Station Manager for CDG lives in my apartment block so I’ll ask him about this later today.

20

Actually, the law in this case is smart. If you leave anything to the discretion of the individual TSA employee, or worse yet rely on their common sense - you will eventually find a problem.

So anything mushy enough to be considered liquit or goop is verboten. This way you don’t have to issue detailed instructions on how to tell mango pulp or peanut butter or hand cream from flavoured plastique, or how to tell peroxide from water; or whether the agent can use discretion in unsealing bottles of wine for example, or jars of honey. Simple, 100% easy to follow rule - if it looks liquid, and it’s more than 4oz or 1oz or whatever - sorry, no can do.

At least we don’t see the TSA agents pretending they can tell peroxide by sniffing or tasting it.