Whilst going through check in at Marrakech airport last week I spied travellers turning up at a stand which wrapped their suitcases in clear wrapping for a small fee. Now why would they do this?
It's not as though the luggage holds leaked or the suitcases were going on a roof rack :-).
Surely they would have to be unwrapped at destination if there was a customs check. Seems a lot of hassle to me.
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Baggage handlers and pilfering
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>> Baggage handlers and pilfering
hence the name "Thiefrow Airport"
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I guess it is an easier way to ensure it has not been tampered with, in some countries I guess things might get stolen from the luggage when they are being scanned on the belt.
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I have seen this wrapping of cases and assumed it is to know a case has not been opened. And if I was a baggage security person - I'd want to look in all such cases!
Wouldn't it be cheaper to take a roll of cling film with you though?
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Some airports are notorious for pilfering by baggage handlers - South Africa springs to mind.
Wrapping your baggage acts as a deterrent but is obviously not totally secure. It's not cling film by the way but actually quite tough plastic.
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>Some airports are notorious for pilfering by baggage handlers - South Africa springs to mind.
It started in SA with suitcases and soon spread to cars.
If you park in the Long Term at JNB you can have your whole car wrapped in clingfilm to deter opportunist thieves.
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It is very very easy to get into and close a case that has zips rather than catches.
IIRC Youtube has demos so wrapping such suitcases has extra value.
"There is a luggage theft and pilferage problem at Johannesburg and Cape Town airports. Use an airport plastic wrapping service when available and avoid placing electronics, jewellery, cameras and other valuables into checked luggage."
Who says so? The Australian government ( plus other info)
www.smartraveller.gov.au/zw-cgi/view/advice/south_africa
"you should vacuum-wrap luggage where local regulations permit."
says
www.fco.gov.uk/en/travel-and-living-abroad/travel-advice-by-country/sub-saharan-africa/south-africa
Vacuum wrap ????
Q: Why should I wrap my luggage?
www.protectabag.com/faq.html
A: Protectabag luggage wrapping is the only fully effective method by which you can know that no-one has entered your luggage without your knowledge, while it has been out of your control. Luggage wrapping is provided at most major airports around the world, it is available throughout Asia, North and South America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East. Luggage wrapping is proven to be so successful in eliminating tampering and theft from luggage that South African Airways has introduced a program to wrap every piece of luggage carried on their flights from Johannesburg – that’s over 6 million pieces of luggage per year!
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If ALL thieves had their fingers (and future benefits) cut off the problem would soon disappear.
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>> If ALL thieves had their fingers (and future benefits) cut off the problem would soon
>> disappear.
yes Ayatollah Uzma Martin Al Devon, do you dress your missus in a sack as well?
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Surely any clever baggage handler would have a roll of film available to wrap round any cases that he had pilfered?
Re wrapping a car, many years ago in Safeway, it used to be common practice that whenever anyone handed in their notice, on their last day the boys would wrap their car in pallet wrap. I remember one guy had a Polo and went striaght to the pub for his leaving do, leaving the car in the car park over the weekend.
That weekend the temperatures plummeted and the snow arrived. Had to leave the car there for a week until it thawed out enough to remove the film!
(And the other tradition on your last day also involved the person who was leaving, the fat from the rotisserie chickens and the flour from the bakery)
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>> (And the other tradition on your last day also involved the person who was leaving,
>> the fat from the rotisserie chickens and the flour from the bakery)
>>
Wrapped a kebab?
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Suitcase wrapping was new to me, until I read this thread.
I've no interest in international travel, which is just as well - too many traps for the unwary.
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I saw one of these machines in Logan/Boston airport in 94 - I thought that security screening requirements would render them as unacceptable.
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>> I've no interest in international travel, which is just as well - too many traps
>> for the unwary.
Rubbish. Travel broadens the mind.
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...Rubbish. Travel broadens the mind...
My mind is as broad as I want it to be, thanks all the same.
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This country could do with some narrow-minded thinking.
Rioters?
Give 'em a good hiding, and lock up any that are still standing.
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>> Rioters?
>>
>> Give 'em a good hiding, and lock up any that are still standing.
Even i can't agree with that, if we had a democracy instead of the 'one party with three heads' state we presently have then maybe, for people could replace what doesn't work with an alternative.
Once the powers that be have got that violent final trump card as acceptable, then we have a dictatorship.
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>> ...Rubbish. Travel broadens the mind...
>>
>> My mind is as broad as I want it to be, thanks all the same.
Were you born in Yorkshire iffy, or is that just your spiritual home? :)
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There are still people who choose not to travel far.
I recall interviewing a Sunderland AFC footballer about his big-money move to Liverpool.
He was was from a Durham pit village and said he'd never been further away than Scarborough on holiday with his parents.
Not strictly speaking true, because he would have travelled to away matches with the team, but the point was made.
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>> There are still people who choose not to travel far.
>>
I heard (on passable authority) one even more striking than that.
Last year I was working on a job which required regular travel to a site on the Isle of Portland - think it was in Easton, or just outside it, if memory serves. Got told by a chap working for the local environmental health department that there were folk in the their 80s living in the southern parts of the island who had "never been to the big city".
Apparently, "big city" didn't mean London. It didn't even mean Weymouth. It meant Fortuneswell. If this was to be believed, these folk had spent all their lives on an island measuring about 4 miles north to south and maybe 2 miles east to west at its widest, and had never been further than about three-fifths of the way up it.
Having encountered some of the more, er, characterful inhabitants while I was there, I was more inclined to believe this than I might otherwise have been.
Very unique place...
Last edited by: paulb on Wed 14 Sep 11 at 21:03
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...Very unique place...
Portsmouth is surrounded by water.
Some long-term residents talk of 'never leaving the island'.
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My mind is as broad as I want it to be...
Iffy, I think you've found your signature line. Damn, they're not allowed, are they?
Incidentally, I've flown out of JNB on SAA twice this year. I saw the wrapping stand but no-one insisted that I use it and, unless it was removed before my case hit the belt at LHR, no wrapping was done behind the scenes either. (My case doesn't have zips, and although the locks are feeble they're probably enough to deter the opportunist pilferer.)
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...Iffy, I think you've found your signature line...
I would hope it applies to all of us.
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"Travel broadens the mind."
Totally agree.
Only by visiting other countries can you understand there are other way of doing things than here in the UK. Give you perspective and ability to judge what is bad and what is good about this country. For example I have just returned from Vancouver and a drive through its suburbs makes me thankful for our much maligned planning laws.
Never venturing from these islands give you a literally insular view of the world.
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Watched someone do this at Lyon. They'd forgotten their passport was still inside.
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<...Very unique place...>
Pedant mode ON:-
"Unique" is an absolute adjective and is not capable of being qualified.
A thing/place/life form, described as unique (i.e the only one in existence) is not partly unique, quite unique, or any diminution or increment of unique.
The entity being described is either unique or NOT unique.
No more, no less.
Pedant mode OFF.
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I bet BigBadDave found an use for cling film (one best not thought about too much)
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>> a very unique note for pedants:
>> sethoscope.net/spew/veryunique.html
>>
Well said.
I've taken up the cudgels against unique over-pedandry before.
It was argued that unique cannot be qualified by anything - very unique, nearly unique, almost unique, partly unique, etc,
but that, perversely, "not unique" is all right, even though it too qualifies uniqueness.
It's all tosh in my opinion. :)
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I was at a party a very long time ago when one of the blokes there carefully stretched clingfilm over the toilet bowl and then put the seat back down.. There was of course a queue of young ladies waiting to use it...
The first one in let out such a scream ! Glad it wasn't my flat...
:-)
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...I was at a party a very long time ago...
You sound like the type of guy who will have been at office parties where young ladies are persuaded to sit astride the photocopier.
I've never been to one of those, but I heard of one party where the glass panel of the copier was broken, almost certainly in that way.
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Some big lasses in geordieland.
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...Some big lasses in geordieland...
I don't know if the stewards' inquiry got that far, but the weight of the alleged culprit may well have been relevant.
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Damn, I thought that video had been redacted.
Must get back onto the lawyers.
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At one part of my career, I used to fix photocopiers, and yes I had a broken glass (known as the platen) to fix, further I also had to extract the developed (but not yet fused) trapped sheet showing the image of a pair of female buns. Very peachy it was. I pinned it on the notice board next to the copier.
Many fun time fixing copiers, even the time a shredder ate my suit jacket,
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Best thing that could have happened to a bit of Harry Fentons schmutter.
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Double breasted it was, two vents, pin stripe, real smart.
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Bet Bobby's still got one like that.
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>> a very unique note for pedants:
>> sethoscope.net/spew/veryunique.html
>>
I disagree!
(But then I would!)
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Degrees of uniqueness are like degrees of virginity.
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Does that mean uniqueness also grows back after marriage?
Last edited by: WillDeBeest on Thu 15 Sep 11 at 15:56
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Wrapping Suitcases in Clingfilm ????? - CGNorwich
