Visting the US of A - Follow up

I met a young lady recently who had read my blog. This surprised me. I really did not think anybody read my blog. I write something when I am in the mood, or I feel an idea hit me.

She talked about my US visit, so I thought a follow up piece was advisable. My suit bag and what happened afterwards.

Lois called the Starbucks in San Antonio airport and, guess what, they had my suit bag! No bomb squad had been near it, no sniffing dogs, no nothing. They were also good enough to Fedex it to my office in NYC, where the package arrived an hour before I was due to leave for the airport to fly home.

God bless Texas.

Photo ID

Ping!


The sound of an email coming in. Almost always about 23 hours before my Swiss flight with the web checkin reminder. An easy enough process which results in a text message on my iPhone with a link to a boarding card.

Zurich airport has changed a lot in the last few years. The latest development has been the combining of multiple security check areas into one large one that herds the traveler through a large duty free shop right after the security check. (I have learned to walk through this without being distracted!)

The other change has been the introduction of multiple "turnstiles" where I scan the QR code of my boarding card that's on my phone. Since my trip this time is to Austria which is in the Schengen area, there is no immigration check.

I zip through security and am at the gate where I place my phone on another scanner which gets me into the plane.

I don't know if you noticed something missing in the above process? Let's go back a few steps:

1. I did not stop at a checkin desk
2. I did not stop at an immigration window
3. I did not stop at the Senator lounge

Nothing unusual so far? So what did I miss?

This is what: Nobody asked me for a photo ID in the whole process of arriving at the airport and sitting down in the plane! For all it mattered to anyone, I could have been Santa Claus. Or Muammar Qaddafi's ghost. Yes my name was on the boarding pass, but it could have been anyone traveling.

So what about security? What if I was Osama bin Laden, who had bought a ticket in the name of Ashok Kishore and gone through the whole process above? Considering that I cannot enter our office building in New York without a photo ID, this whole episode seems a bit bizarre. The Americans must be so far ahead of the Europeans in making us secure.

(By the way, the SBB conductor asked to see my passport when checking my digital ticket that I had bought via their app.)

So let's think about this for a second. I have flown from Zurich to Vienna, checked into a hotel, and flown back home and NOBODY asked to see a photo ID? I mean, what's wrong with everybody? Or should the question be : What's right with everybody?

How secure are we when our ID's are checked at every stage of travel through airports and hotels? What is it that makes this process more secure than NOT checking the ID at all? What if the person traveling on this trip was Srishti instead and she had just taken my ticket and used it herself? Would that make the airport or airline less secure than if her ID was checked?

Food for thought.

In the meantime, I am so enjoying this document free travel within the Schengen area. And it did not make me feel unsafe at all, just more relaxed and comfortable.