Just enjoy the bit in the middle.
(And no, by "the bit in the middle", I meant the holiday.)
Members of my family have been left stranded in a foreign country when an airline refused to carry them because one of them asked why he was required to show the same documents for the third time in rapid succession. (The airline's excuse for this absurdly disproportionate response changed so many times afterwards it was hard to keep track, and I won't say any more because as far as I'm aware legal action for compensation is still pending.)
Hundreds of people from my country have recently been held in hotels under armed guard because after a diversion to a different country's airport due to the ash problems, they obviously didn't have visas, so they couldn't even get a train home. I'm not sure why anyone in a country these people never wanted or expected to visit would consider them such a security threat that they couldn't leave and had to be held at gunpoint, but there you go.
These things are not trivial, and I don't think a single one of those people would consider objecting to this sort of security theatre "being silly".
And you fail on the "bit in the middle", because all the unpleasantness that I described in those earlier posts happens on a single flight.
You were talking about the start and the end of the journey in your OP. I assumed the "end" part referred to the return flight. Hence the holiday would be "the bit in the middle".
I'm know that people have bad experiences sometimes, but you're making an absurdly huge drama out of it. Refusing to fly is simply not a reasonable response to the typical level of inconvenience.
>Hundreds of people from my country have recently been held in hotels under armed guard
This has nothing to do with airport security, but rather immigration policy. You're going off on so many tangents here I'm not really sure what to say.
The point is that almost everyone I know seems to be having a bad experience with flying these days, and almost all of it is directly due to the over-zealous security and related issues. Why should we "come quietly" and accept our quality of life being reduced in this way?
> Refusing to fly is simply not a reasonable response to the typical level of inconvenience.
I, and an increasing number of my friends and family, disagree with you. Fortunately, where and how we travel still remains our choice, so those modes of transport and destinations that offer a pleasant, efficient experience will benefit, while those that do not will suffer.
Just as a counterpoint, almost everyone I know is minorly inconvenienced and continues on their merry way way when flying. Mainly grumbling about having to repack their carry-on and security theater jokes. And these are people flying into/out of major airports (SFO, LAX, JFK, ORD to name a few).
// edit: Include me in this as well. And I've flown into or out of ROC, JFK and SFO ~8-10x a year (4-5 trips a year) for the past 3 years.
Of course, this just illustrates anecdotes and that people view things differently. Shocking, I know.
Hundreds of people from my country
Out of curiosity, just what country are you from? Or your family? You haven't said. At least, not that I've noticed.
I'm just wondering how much (if any) of his/friends/families experience is due to something unfortunate (such as racial profiling) vs how much (again, if any) is simply being blown out of proportion.
I've met many people through the university in the city where I live, so they come from a diverse range of backgrounds. I have noticed no common racial or nationality elements in those who have mentioned having a worse time with airport security.
At any rate, my only point was that there is a connection between the motivations for border/immigration security and airport security. Addressing the deeper motivations behind the problems with both should make both improve.
Neither did I -- that's why I said it was a tangent.
And we're not talking about wandering around at their leisure, we're talking about not even being allowed to get a train home. It's not as if someone is a serious risk of becoming an illegal immigrant, if they had no intention of being in the country in the first place. But there seems to be no concept of applying common sense and issuing emergency visas despite the unusual circumstances.
For what it's worth, I haven't flown in over a year and a half, and have no intention of doing so until airport security returns to some semblance of sanity. I'm not being a "drama queen" about it; I simply won't pay an exorbitant rate for the privilege of being treated as a criminal because I'd like to board an airplane.
So, you don't think your second clause there has event a hint of hyperbole?
(If the "exorbitant rate" portion is what you object to, see my reply elsewhere in the thread.)
The additional cost is purely because of bureaucracy, not the least of which is our security theatrics.
NY to LA is $325 by train. It's 175 to 350 flying on Virgin America.
(My apologies, I should have specified continental "international" flights, as that's typically all I've ended up flying in the past, with the occasional exceptions for vacations.)
The experience of the Israeli authorities, is that doing this works. You have to do this 7 times to get through the airport in Israel. They can also do it quickly and efficiently.
I agree that aiport security is a bit of a farce. But hysteria of this sort doesn't contribute much to the political debate either.
I'm not sure that providing practical self-help advice ought to count as trolling, anyway. HN isn't meant to be a political forum. Strictly speaking, any political debate is OT here.
It's not hysteria, it's fact. I personally will not fly to many destinations now, because the unpleasantness and inefficiency mean it is not worth the effort. I have been finding out recently that several of my friends and family now share this view, so I'm certainly not an isolated case.
For comparison, I will happily travel between London and Europe via Eurostar to Paris, where the equivalent checks required about five minutes and nothing particularly onerous or unpleasant, and in fact the staff were friendly and helpful throughout.
You do seem pretty sensitive (e.g. worrying about the fact that people are "glaring" at you).
Are you a US citizen?
(Edit: And on the glaring over the passport thing, that is clearly not a deal-breaker in itself, though for me the arbitrary strip searching is, as is the biometric scanning to enter certain countries.)
FWIW, the visa makes very little difference to how you're treated. Same experience as when I've entered on a visa waiver. Customs & immigration are generally polite, often even friendly. Security is a hassle, but not an unbearable one by any stretch of the imagination.
Before I went to the US for the first time, a lot of British people did warn me about how awful US immigration officers are. But frankly I'm now inclined to put this down to the general British tendency to expect the worst :)