A small bouquet today for the vigilance of New Zealand's much-maligned AvSec employees - those people who run the scanners, and tickle you under the armpits with their metal detectors when you're getting onto a flight: I've just returned from a 10 day overseas trip, with repeated baggage checks through Singapore and Abu Dhabi on the way back.
After 24 hours en route, I reached the scanner at CHC, for the final leg to WLG... "May I look in your bag please sir." In my carry-on was the old Swiss Army knife that I always travel with (you never know when you'll find a horse with a stone trapped in its hoof), but invariably - until now, it seems - I've made sure it was in my checked baggage. I know I used it in Dubai earlier in the week (I can't remember why... a camel with an embedded stone?) and I must have dropped it back into the wrong bag.
Even better, Mr AvSec let me keep my knife - it's within domestic flight tolerances, but not international (no - I didn't ask the logic of that).
And what does this have to do with a corporate governance blog? Not a lot, except to show yet again the triumph of substance over form: Homeland Security departments can develop all the questionnaires, body scanners and x-ray strip technology they like, but unless someone actually looks at the screen it seems a futile investment of effort, overtime and taxpayers' dollars.
Long live balanced risk assessment... and those of us who fly regularly.
Travel safely.
