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Home  >  Travel  >  How I Almost Missed My Flight to Frankfurt
Travel

How I Almost Missed My Flight to Frankfurt

Matthew Klint Posted onSeptember 24, 2014 10 Comments

I recently made a short trip to the USA, including a visit to some dear friends in Washington, DC. I like taking the 10pm United service out of Dulles because it allows for a full day and relaxed dinner before the short overnight flight to Frankfurt, which arrives at midday – not too early, but not too late. Flying out of Dulles for more than a decade, I tend to cut if close before flights – a pattern which has led to close calls on several occasions. But nothing like this trip.

I arrived at 9:05p due to unforeseen road closures in Fairfax County.  Technically, I was already too late, as I had missed the 60-minute check-in cutoff for international travel and I had a bag to check. Thankfully, the 1K line was empty and the gent manning the desk talked his supervisor into allowing the bag through, but told me to hurry, as the plane would begin boarding in five minutes.

Problem: TSA PreCheck was closed. With a raft of late-night international departures from IAD, the security screening area was a zoo, with lines snaking back and forth for hundreds of yards. Even the premium line was long.

What was I going to do? I hate it when people cut through lines. The lame “I have a flight to catch” excuse is eye-roll-inducing since everyone has a flight to catch.

So I waited in line like everyone else, even though it was now 9:15p.

And waited. And waited.

The Saudia flight to Riyadh was going out and there was large group of Saudi woman in front of me, masked from head to toe in burkas.

Great.

The husband (I assume, or perhaps brother) of these woman herded them through the line but everything stopped as the TSA clerk was unable to confirm their identities just by their eyes. A team of women were called in and the women were escorted to a private area for screening.

It was now 9:25p and the line began to move again. Finally, my ID was checked and I was good to go…to the next line, even longer than the last.

Sometimes, you have to do what you have to do. I keep a United Airlines lanyard in my bag that was giving to me at the SFO tour a few years back just for situations like this (and for the record, this has been my first time in at least two years I have had to pull this stunt). I put on the United lanyard and proceeded to the very front of the security checkpoint, as if I knew exactly what I was doing. I passed up more than 60 people in the process. Note United lanyards are available for puchase on united.com and I was not impersonating any airline employee, just wearing my lanyard,

That’s it? If only.

Every time I go through TSA screening, the tendinitis in my right shoulder seems to flare up, so I advised the TSO that I could not walk through the full body scanner. No problem – that just means you go through the metal detector and your hands are swabbed for explosives.

The test came back positive – explosives were detected on my hand.

“Follow me please” was the command from the TSA supervisor.

It was now 9:30p.

I was escorted to a section of the security-screening checkpoint where that was closed and told to wait.

I waited five minutes before demanding (courteously) that someone come over, as my flight departed in 25 minutes from the far end of the C Concourse.

“We’ll be right with you sir.”

A screener came over and began to empty out everything from both of my carry-ons. Every zipper was opened, every electronic device was turned on, and every paper was looked over. And that’s where it got even more interesting.

I keep my laptop in a black leather case that has two other compartments. As the TSO opened the side compartment of the bag, out fluttered three boarding passes, all with SSSS on them.

SSSS stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection…given either randomly to passengers or assigned based on their ticket (such as odd one-way routings). In June I flew from the LA to Germany via Honolulu, Tokyo, and Chicago (that’s a long story) and the routing triggered a SSSS on my HNL-NRT-ORD-FRA boarding passes, which I still had in my bag.

The TSO became concerned and immediately summoned two colleagues. A spot conference was convened on what to do about this. Thankfully, a sane-headed supervisor stated that the SSSS was from a different trip – there was no SSSS this time. Duh.

The baggage check continued and as the TSO opened my main carry-on bag, he found a copy of the Qur’an sitting on top of my clothes. You should have seen the look on his face.

I know that Islamic text should not be cause for concern, but let’s face it – prejudices sometimes link all of Islam to radical groups like ISIS. I’m not Moslem, but I did pick up a free copy of the Qur’an that missionaries were handing out on the streets of Frankfurt a few days before, just because I’ve never read it and thought it would be an appropriate addition to my library.

The supervisor led me to a curtained-off screening room and gave me the usual disclaimer “back of the palms”,  “till I meet resistance” etc…it was a very invasive screening, but I’ve had worse in Switzerland.

It was now 9:45p, but we were not quite done. The supervisor asked to borrow my boarding pass so he could record that the screening was performed and I also had to repack my bag.

The United flight was scheduled to close at 9:50p, and it was 9:50p before I made a sprint down to the train to Terminal C. One had just pulled out…

A few minutes later, the next one arrived and I made my way to Terminal C, where I had to dash all the way down to C4, which is a long stretch from the station to the terminal and from the terminal entrance to C4. I ran, huffing and puffing with my bags, and made it at 10:03p, fearing I had missed my flight.

The flight had not departed yet and the door was still open. Even better, my seat had not been given up! There was a problem, apparently, with a group of German students traveling and the gate agent was trying to sort out their tickets. I was thankful.

As I slid into my seat onboard the plane, I smiled knowing I would see my wife in nine hours…before wiping the sweat off my brow.

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About Author

Matthew Klint

Matthew is an avid traveler who calls Los Angeles home. Each year he travels more than 200,000 miles by air and has visited more than 135 countries. Working both in the aviation industry and as a travel consultant, Matthew has been featured in major media outlets around the world and uses his Live and Let's Fly blog to share the latest news in the airline industry, commentary on frequent flyer programs, and detailed reports of his worldwide travel.

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10 Comments

  1. Ismael Reply
    September 25, 2014 at 12:48 am

    Wow! What a story! Very exciting. Glad you made it.

  2. jettyboy Reply
    September 25, 2014 at 2:05 am

    so you screamed and threw a hissy fit when United booted you off their flight, but see nothing wrong in using their Lanyard to cut in line just because you couldnt be bothered enough to show up on time to the airport. You are an entitled tool.

  3. naif Reply
    September 25, 2014 at 4:47 am

    Glad you made your flight…. by the way in case you have any questions or need any additional info while reading the Quran, feel free to reach out to me.. I will try my best to answer your questions…

  4. jeff Reply
    September 25, 2014 at 1:34 pm

    Glad you made your flight, but it is unethical to “impersonate” an airline employee to cut the line.

  5. Sebastian Reply
    September 25, 2014 at 4:14 pm

    Hi Matt,
    did you know that those people distributing the Quran all over Germany for free are so called Salafists, i.e. radical islamists? Many of them are connected with islamisitic terror organizations like IS. They are – rightfully – considered an essential threat to national security by the respective authorities here in Germany. You were probably lucky that the TSOs that found the book were not aware of this fact (in case you mentioned you got it for free). Otherwise, you may have been subject to further questions and missed you flight.

  6. Mike Reply
    September 26, 2014 at 12:20 am

    Lol…@sebastian… So you think that you will become IS member after reading the Book…. Come on man use some brain

  7. Sebastian Reply
    September 26, 2014 at 9:55 am

    @Mike: No, not at all. There is nothing wrong with reading the Quran (speaking of using the brain). Just wanted to let him know that radical islamists are walking around spreading their views here in Germany. Plus you never know how TSOs in the US deal with this fact.

  8. Arthur Reply
    September 26, 2014 at 2:18 pm

    I am the opposite. I never cut it close out of IAD. Partly that is because the international lounges I am usually using (AF, BA or LH) are pretty nice, so I don’t mind working out of them for a while. But the distance from check-in to gate and security can still be a delay. I think TSA pre-check is only for domestic. There is a special business/first priority line at the far left side of the downstairs, though I don’t find that it saves a lot of time – it just turns you out to the regular screening lines a little further in. I’ve never seen it closed.

  9. PolishKnight Reply
    September 30, 2014 at 3:56 pm

    I think it’s an amusing story and also honest. He did a lot of wrong things and fessed up to them which made it all the more interesting. For me, one of the biggies was not going through the scanner. Deal with the tendonitus acting up and don’t volunteer for the secondary screening when you have old SSSS boarding passes and a Koran in your bag. Hilarious. He hopped on every single egg and got through.

  10. Jack Reply
    October 2, 2014 at 1:46 am

    @jettyboy he was not impersonating a United employee, he was about to miss his flight and it was good that he was able to do that. The incident with him being kicked off the flight was a great example of how 9/11 was won by the terrorists because now everybody is afraid of them.

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