Securing Air Passengers against the Threat of Menstruation

Indian airport security is usually pretty lax. Not that they don’t use uniformed military police to check your reservation to allow you admission into the terminal; but generally speaking, entry and egress can be managed easily with a smile and a flimsy excuse. Not that liquids and gels aren’t banned on flights, as elsewhere in the world; but I routinely travel with a liter water bottle, and sometimes my full dop-kit, without being stopped. And one more thing: Sikhs are permitted to travel with swords, which are religious symbols (apparently too valuable to be entrusted to the vagaries of airline baggage handling) as well as unnerving carry-on items.

But as Independence Day approached, and with al Qaeda terror threats on the front page of every newspaper, things got tougher.

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Doing Their Level-Best

If air travel in India sucks, it is generally because India has learned too much from the US and Europe, rather than too little. Sure, there are some distinctively Indian annoyances. Passengers deplane in a mad scrum for the aisle-way, as if they were disembarking a Mumbai commuter train and had someplace to be other than killing time in front of the baggage claim carrousel. And once at baggage claim, travelers press forward with their luggage carts in complete disregard for the inconvenience they cause each other. But generally, the whole process looks all-to-familiar to anyone accustomed to post-9/11 air travel in the US.

And yet, today we found two aspects of Indian air travel that American carriers and the dreadful Transportation Safety Administration would do well to emulate.