Oxymoronic airport security

Martini and I wanted to go to Jogjakarta to see her family, so onto the world-wide interweb to research train timetables. Web access was only from the hotel lobby, was intermittent and was a challenge as the site was in Indo and Martini had stayed up in the room. I keyed in what I thought was the correct spelling but eventually settled for calling the place YoghurtCarton! It turned out the only train I could find was the overnight one which would get us in at 4 a.m.; I wasn't keen as we'd been up until 6 a.m. the previous night anyway.

The following morning Martini tried and, guess what! No trains! A train crash was blocking the track.

What about flying? A telephone call to a travel agent resulted in a quote of 400,000 Rupiah (Rp) but accompanied by the caveat,

"That price is only available at the airport and I cannot guarantee there are any seats left."

We decided to take a chance and just go to the airport 'on spec'. I love 'third-world' chaos in airports - see the photo. After queueing, and being queue-jumped a couple of times, we were told there were no seats left; bummer! But, just as we were walking away from the little enquiry window a total stranger 'siddled' up (no other word for it; very subversive and B-film-ish) saying he could get us seats on the 2.30 flight for 1 million Rp each. It was now 2.15 so I said,

"We won't make it."

"Don't worry," was the reply, "we'll delay it."

He showed us his ID which Martini accepted as reasonable enough to trust so we gave him our ID and she accompanied him while I went to the ATM (or "8 a.m." as Martini understands my accent) to buy Rp2,000,000 (OK, I'll save you the trouble; its S$290). I won't tell you his name, even though I suspect he worked for Lion Air with that being their way of getting higher prices for last-minute tickets.

When he returned at 2.25 p.m. he had the two boarding passes; one for Tri Martini and one for Dani Herman, which was to be me. The real Mr. Herman must have been bumped because we paid more than he did.

My suitcase, labled Clive Rushton, was checked in as Tri Martini, then "Mr. Dani Herman" and his partner, Mrs. Tri Martini, went to security. Security scanned the boarding passes so they had a record that Mr. Herman had passed through their electronic gate. And an interesting electronic gate it was; every single passenger set off the beeper so everyone was subsequently frisked with the wand thing. It was now 2.40 p.m.

Martini is easily distracted by shiny things and bright ideas and she stopped to tell me a story about something or other until I reminded her that the flight was waiting for us.

"Oh, yes!" she gasped and off we went again to gate B2 where we were told there was a two and a half hour delay. "Don't worry, we'll delay it," now began to make sense.

Well, the thought of sitting on the floor at a departure gate for 150 minutes was no fun so we decided to go back out and look for restaurants, cafes or bars. There was an open gate next to security so we went out through that without anything being scanned - Mr. Herman and Mrs. Tri M were officially still inside the departure gate area.

No beer in the restaurant but there was beer in the little KwikiMart, so we took that into the restaurant which, apparently, is an OK thing to do.

When it was time to return we were re-scanned at security but no-one picked up the fact that we'd entered twice without "exiting". So, to recap; using my real ID, I bought a boarding pass under the name of a passenger who had already purchsed the ticket. Had Mr. Herman checked on any luggage I wonder? I then checked my luggage using Martini's boarding pass. Then I exited through security without any checking, then re-entered without being picked up. I could have met Ossama Bin-Liner or one of his "Stan" friends in the restaurant and he could have got on the plane using Mr. Herman's boarding pass. A full laden 737 out of Jakarta is just as lethal as a 737 out of Boston. "Airport security" is an oxymoron.

A little postscript; Martini and I were seated separately and she got talking to the girl next to her; she had paid Rp200,000 for her ticket!!!!! I never speak to my neighbours on planes.

There are 156 people called Dani Herman with Facebook accounts, one of which has this as his/her (its an androgynous name) profile picture.