Our airports are safe. Every plane coming from outside the country is always on the radar and accounted for by Canadian Customs. Right?
For those of you, like me, who believe this to be the case - here is what reality was last Tuesday night for a flight I was on returning from Mexico.
The flight plan was fairly simple. First the plane would land in Victoria and release its Island passengers and then continue on to Vancouver where the balance of the returning vacationers would deplane.
The first part of the plan went smoothly. After a rather bumpy landing due to wind storms in the area, the jet landed and the first set of passengers went on their merry ways. With a change of aircraft crew and a top-up of fuel (why that was necessary for a short jump is fodder for another column) the flight continued on to Vancouver.
There something went awry. Instead of parking at an international berth at YVR (Vancouver's airport's designation) the plane sailed into a domestic spot. And so instead of the passengers being disgorged where Canadian Customs is located, they were inside the terminal without clearing Customs.
Now some of you may be thinking, "So what?"
Well, first of all, several passengers who had only carry-on baggage whistled out of the terminal and were on their way home when the officers at Customs suddenly noticed baggage coming out on an international carousal - the first hint Customs had that an international flight had landed of which they had no knowledge. The flight, SkyService 5283 originating in Zihuatanejo, Mexico, was not on their manifest of flights due at YVR on Jan. 31.
As can be expected, once they discovered the oversight, a Customs officer appeared like lightning and preceded to corral the remaining passengers in a holding area at the top of the stairs we had just come down. And that's when the fun started.
According to one Customs officer with many years service at YVR, this was the first time this had ever happened. And no one knew quite what to do with us.
It wasn't just a simple case of reversing our steps and going in the right door. No, to get to Customs it meant going through Security and traversing almost the entire length of the airport. And in case you're under the impression that all levels of bureaucracy at the airport co-operate, guess again. While the Customs people were concerned in this significant breach of protocol, they also remembered they were dealing with Canadian citizens who included two infants and several small children and a handful of seniors who had been travelling for over seven hours and were dead tired. Not so the Security people. To them we were the biggest pain in the backside they had ever had to deal with.
Their attitudes ranged from outright rude - one woman acted like she was herding cattle - to the poor idiot who had never encountered anyone in his lineup without a boarding pass before. Regardless of how many times the Customs folks told him none of us had a boarding pass, he was still asking everyone for one. Finally the penny dropped and he stopped asking in time for the last four people to go through his line.
After that indignity, we tromped through the airport and were whisked through Customs with a minimum of further delay.
The entire episode left me worried about the ease with which an undesirable alien could have entered our country that night. The lack of co-operation between the two main forces concerned with our safety also concerned me. At one point there were even several RCMP officers summoned to deal with us. And finally, I wondered how much loot my fellow passengers managed to sneak in to the country with the cursory examination we received from Customs that night. I hope there's never a terrorist arriving at YVR from Mexico.
