Christmas in Memphis: Homeland Security edition.

[rivka]

Remember how I was concerned about the possible security ramifications of flying with Alex's liquid antibiotics?

Ha. I had no idea.

Late the night before we left, Michael printed out our e-tickets, which (unusually, for us) had been issued through a travel agency because we were using his father's reward miles to pay for some of our fare. Glancing at the tickets, he noticed that both of our tickets had been made out in his last name. Oops.

At the airport in the morning, we checked our bags at the curbside counter and then went in to the Northwest Airlines desk to see if they could manage to change the name on my ticket. I explained the situation to one of the ticket agents. Naively, I guess, I still didn't see it as a big deal - just an annoyance that it would be better to clear up before we flew. She adjusted my worldview quickly and brutally.

"Not only can't we change your ticket, we can't check you in. We can't allow you on the plane. Your only recourse is to get back to the travel agency and ask them to reissue the ticket. There will probably be a $100 fee."

"The travel agency is in the Central time zone," Michael said. "There's no way we're going to get hold of them before our flight."

The ticket agent shrugged. Nothing could be done at the airport. I simply wouldn't be able to fly.

"I guess you and Alex would go without me?" I asked Michael. "...And I would drive to my family in Elmira?" No, he said, he thought I would be able to get some flight to Memphis sometime - I would just need to work with the travel agency until they got me a ticket. We looked helplessly at each other.

Then I had a thought. "Let's try to check in using the automated machines. The worst that happens is that I get stopped at security, and then we're no worse off than we are right now."

We made sure that the ticket agent we'd talked to before wasn't looking at us, and fed our ticket numbers into the automated check-in machines. It spat out two sets of boarding passes for us. We walked to security, to the special entry chute for people with wheelchairs or strollers. Michael handed her both our boarding passes. We each showed our IDs. She glanced at the IDs, glanced at the boarding passes, thanked us, and waved us through.

That was it.

Once in Memphis, Michael called the travel agency to discuss, at length, what we should do about our return flight. (Among other things, the travel agent wanted to know why I hadn't changed my name when I got married. Not sure why that was relevant, unless she thought he might say something like, "She'd committed acts of terrorism under her maiden name, and wanted to be sure that all her works appeared together in databases.") It all came down to this, though: once you've already used half of a round-trip ticket, you can't change the identity of the passenger even if you're just correcting a mistake. The agent recommended that we arrive early at the airport and be prepared for extra security screening. She helpfully suggested that we present a copy of our marriage license - something that, unfortunately, we are not in the habit of carrying when we travel.

Instead, we showed up at the Memphis airport two hours before our return flight. We checked in at the self-service machines. Michael handed both our boarding passes to the security agent, and we each showed her our IDs. She glanced at them, glanced at the boarding passes, thanked us, and waved us through.

The TSAs in Memphis did open my backpack and visually confirm that the bottle of liquid inside was medicine. (In Baltimore, apparently, they didn't notice.) But that was it.

I was simultaneously relieved and unsettled by the whole business. Relieved because it would have been an awful nightmare to be stopped at security, and possibly to have to purchase an entire new ticket in my own name. Unsettled because, if security procedures are supposed to ensure that all tickets match photo IDs, it shouldn't have been so trivially easy for us to pass through unnoticed.

Comments

[ink-monkey.livejournal.com]

Really, I'm not surprised you got by so easily; the last time I had to fly (from Logan Airport in Boston, which supposedly has really stringent security measures), I forgot that I'd need a picture ID and had this horrible, frozen moment at the security checkpoint before my brother spoke up and said I was only fifteen. They just waved me through. I didn't know whether to pissed off that I still look like that much of a kid or relieved that there hadn't been some kind of hassle.