Airline Quackery event #1 Manila, Luzon, Philippines November 2013

After another night of crashing on the beach in La Union, we were up at 4 a.m. to catch a bus back to Manila for our flight to Coron.  After a 20-minute ride to the nearest bus station, we were able to catch a 6 a.m. bus.  Inevitably we slept most of the way.

After a 7 hour trip, we arrived at the airport with just enough time to make our flight since the bus ends up taking an hour longer than we were told due to traffic.  We rushed to get checked in for our flight and paid the 50-peso baggage fee since we were well overweight with all my climbing gear.

Ummm...We were supposed to
be there an hour ago. 

Everything went fairly smoothly, despite being incredibly rushed, until we got to security.  The Manila airport security x-rayed my bag, seeing my climbing rope inside and informed me that I was not allowed to take the rope on the flight according to their "no sporting goods" policy. When I asked why it was forbidden to bring it on the flight, the response I received was “because you could die sir” which seemed to be a common theme in our trip.  Everything’s too dangerous.  So Daisy grabbed my climbing rope to go check it while I went ahead to our gate. 

Problem was, however, when I got to our boarding gate, they were doing final boarding call for missing passengers- Daisy and I.  I informed them we weren't missing, we were just having a hard time with security but Daisy was taking forever.  What could possibly be taking so long?  Finally I asked how long before the final closing of the boarding door and they said I had 4 minutes.  That’s all I needed.  

I sprinted across the airport back to security only to find Daisy with the rope bag in her hand arguing with security about what to do with it.  Apparently, the airline had told her it was too late to check the bag and we’d either have to give up the rope or miss the flight.  Now there’s a phrase in the local language besides Mandarin in Taiwan- Taiwanese.  That phrase I often find my self saying is “Zuhgga Bunsuo,” which means “This is such garbage!” And this, my friends was VERY much “bunsuo.”  There seemed to be some dispute between the security and airline employees though and I decided to exploit this tension by being even more persistent rather than backing down and getting run over.  So after a bit more persistence, the airline convinced the head security member to sign a waiver for us as he escorted us (sprinting all the way) on to the boarding gate.  Fortunately, he had a radio and thus informed the boarding gate we would be arriving.  We hastened onto the plane, fully acknowledging all the confused and annoyed stares of our fellow passengers.  I looked at Daisy and with a quick smile announced "Welcome to the Philippines!"