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Edited on Sat Feb-27-10 02:16 PM by DFW
Friday morning, I accompanied a Colorado woman, over here in Europe for an interview with my division, out to the Brussels airport, usually an efficient, uncomplicated airport to fly out of, for her flight back to the USA.
While waiting in line to check in, a Continental agent came up and asked if we were both traveling. I said I was not, and she made me leave the line. To make sure I heard correctly, I switched to Flemish (she was not American), and she continued in English--already a bit odd, I thought. No Belgian working in a security capacity at Zavantem Airport would have a problem with Flemish, and so I asked if she understood Flemish (she said she did, which she would have done whether or not it was a lie).
Anyway, I left the line, and she started grilling our prospective employee, not only with the standard questions (who packed your bags, have they been with you the whole time, etc etc), but also where she had been, where were her train tickets (I had them), where was her hotel bill (I had left it in the hotel, as my outfit paid it, and I hadn't checked out yet), what was she doing in Europe and why, basically treated her as if she had said her name was Bin Laden, and she intended to blow up the plane.
The Continental agent then followed her to check-in, and then called over a special Belgian security services guard to accompany her through passport control and security check. The Security guy seemed OK, seemed to know his stuff, and was therefore completely baffled as to why he had been made to watch over a 28 year old American woman who obviously posed no danger whatsoever. She received two extra body pat-downs (no one else did) before being allowed to board the plane.
I almost think this Continental Airlines woman was in cahoots with some genuine bad guys, and selected our prospective employee at random to cause a fuss, and provide a distraction so as to let someone really evil through unnoticed (maybe at a later date, and this was trial run--in my line of work, we unfortunately have to consider crap like this). Either that, or she had PMS, or was trained by our TSA, who are also notorious for harassing perfectly innocent people at random, and catching no bad guys at all.
Whatever, our prospective employee left with a less favorable impression of Belgium, and a far less favorable impression of Continental Airlines than she had had up to that point. Continental would probably retort that they only have our safety in mind, but while safety and stupidity may start with the same letter, that's about all they have in common.
I also saw that Continental had joined the Star Alliance, which also contains United, an airline only to be taken in case of extreme desperation or dire emergency. We have now added Continental to that status. In my book, they rank right down there with Air Albania, if there is such a thing, and they are, for now, anyway, on our "no-book" list.
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