Entries from January 1, 2008 - February 1, 2008
Brad
As you’ve heard, some UK airports now allow a personal item in addition to one carryon, the determining factor being the availability of the new 3-D luggage scanners. I flew out of Heathrow on January 8 - day two of the relaxed rule - with no hassle at all. The screeners seemed quite relaxed; in fact they didn’t seem to be giving the bags a great deal of attention. My wife’s bulging 3-1-1 baggy, however, did attract the screeners’ attention. She was pulled aside for about five minutes while all of liquids were litmus-tested. I can’t say if this was because she had lots of liquids (though all under three ounces) or if it was because most of here containers were unmarked; it may have been random. At any rate, it was painless and pretty quick. One difference between US and UK procedures has to do with shoes. In most US airports your shoes go through the main scanner in a bin. At Heathrow we cleared the carryon scan only to shuffle through another line for a separate shoe scan. All in all, Heathrow was less hellacious than usual. The staff was pretty helpful; we witnessed very little drama. That’s a good thing since the Heathrow can often feel like a second-rate disaster movie.
NOTE: If traveling to the UK, check with BAA for the latest implementations of the personal item allowance. At the moment it’s apparently inforce only at LHR, Manchester, and Glasgow.
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We’re off to London with some Tom Bihn bags to test. The new Western Flyer would have packed at about nine pounds, but my college instructor wife decided she needs to get a little work done in the evenings: so add six pounds of MacBook Pro and a TB Brain Cell to my bag. The Brain Cell snaps in nicely but takes up a good bit of space. My bag is tight; hers is two-thirds full at best. She’s carrying the Aeronaut (which she packed to about 15 pounds) so I’ll do an update on it. Reviews expected by next weekend. Both of these bags will get a real workout since we have no reservations and will have to carry them around for a few hours.
Also - we’ll depart Heathrow on the second day of the new UK policy that will allow a personal item in addition to one carryon (provided the terminals have the new x-ray scanners in place). I’m guessing Terminal 3 will have them, so we’ll have a report on how the new system works.
The London weather won’t be great, but it was 10 degrees at my home this morning…
