Airplane madness

Well, as I said in my last entry, here's my airline madness story. I thought that the whole can you/can't you knit on planes had been covered on the various discussion boards but my experience on my way out to NY was just silly.

I had my knitting on a pair of circular metal Addis in a plastic bag in my carry on luggage. I also had 2 pairs of circular bamboo Addis in my carry on bag - I had meant to put them in my checked in luggage but forgot. So I went through security and put my bag through the scanning machine with no difficulty and proceeded to the gate of my flight.

There they were doing individual bag checks. The man who went through my bag, pulled out my knitting which was in a plastic ziplock bag. However, due to the way he was holding the bag, he could only see the yarn and missed the metal Addis which were showing on the other side of the bag. Then he pulled out the pouch that contained my bamboo Addis.

He proceeded to tell me that these were incredibly dangerous, that I was irresponsible and that they could be used as a garotte. I tried to explain to him that I had knit on Virgin flights both to and from the US in the last 8 months - and that anyone could use a belt or a strong pair of shoe laces or a scarf as a garotte. He got angry with me, raised his voice and told me I was lying, that it wasn't possible that I had knitted on any Virgin flight.

At this point, I decided to leave it and walk away - I was quite angry - not so much because he wanted to take my needles, I alway knew that might happen, but because of the way he was speaking to me. So I took my bag, left the bamboo Addis and walked off.

It was only when I was seated on the plane that I realised that I still had my knitting with my metal Addis still in my bag - seeing as he hadn't noticed them. I had completely forgotten about them as I was so angry at the previous incident. I grabbed a flight attendant and said 'Excuse me, I have my knitting with me..' and was about to offer to hand it over to her for the flight - when she said that it was fine for me to knit on the flight and that they had no issue with it.

So, leaving aside the fact that the random bag searches are not exactly effective, I have written to Virgin to say that it is astounding that there is not a clear policy - that their airline staff think that it is OK for me to knit whereas their ground policy think that I am a danger.

So there you go, if the airlines don't appear to be sure as to whether knitting is allowed or not, how on earth are we?

End of rant :)

Posted by Amelia at December 18, 2004 11:22 AM