Flying Air Lingus back from Ireland, as I have done many times. I felt fairly relaxed and familiar using this airline.
No one likes to fly. Too many people packed into small seats, breathing recycled air.
We got to the airport early so we could get to the lounge early, eat, relax and listen for our boarding call. Immediately we found the convenient automated check-in for our luggage.
Only then did I learn that I was “Tagged.”
What does that mean?
It means you cannot put your luggage through early. It means you must first speak to an airline steward and then hopefully, zip, zip I’m in, I guessed. So we were still really early and there was plenty of time to get through this check-in process.
Air Lingus opened my bags, inspected my easel, asked a lot of questions, stated how happy they were with me painting there lovely country, and sheepishly informed me there was “no way I would be boarding this flight with a box full of oil paints.”
I haggled and reasoned and pleaded to them that they certainly were not in the habit of confiscating every artist’s oil paints from all the artists like myself that travel, to paint their marvelous Island.
I reasoned all the previous times I have traveled there and other international destinations to paint on location, and no airline ever took away my paints. Or even looked twice at my cadmium and ochers . (Except for the years I painted with the big tubes of lead white which always set off the security x-ray machine alarms and they thought it was a gun.) But even then, they just taped over the hinges of the paint box to secure it for the flights and always let me keep my lead white.
But they did take all my oils this day.
They confiscated my dangerous, toxic very expensive oil paints and they are probably sitting in some drawer somewhere being very dangerous.
But it didn’t end there. Air Lingus searched my bags again and again at every stop, before I boarded. Then when I finally got into my seat after waiting in long now late passenger lines, I relaxed for a minute, only to be asked to get off the plane with my bags to meet with additional security personnel.
Here I was patted down, apologized to, and my nearly empty carry-on searched once again.
They were so nice and let me keep my brushes and my paintings. And actually after being searched so many times, I had to wonder while I stood there watching that last search, how they could continually miss my palette knife and mat knife in plain site.
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