In Reply to: Get off your high horse posted by LynneeD on Monday, 21. January 2008 at 19:21 Bali Time:
I did not mean to denigrate you personally, but it does annoy me when people try to flout the rules that are meant to protect us all - either through ignorance or design.
These are the facts:
Due to suspected terrorists trying to take various liquids onto aircraft, which when mixed form explosives, there are now stringent rules in place. We can surely be grateful that these actions were discovered before another major disaster occured, with hundreds dead, don't you think ??
The situation now is that any liquids, gels or pastes taken on board an aircraft must be in containers of 100 ml or less, and clearly displayed. The reasoning being that volatile mixtures of 100 ml per component would not be enough to disable an aircraft.
When it comes to greater quantities of liquids - such as 1 litre bottles of alcohol, the rules state that these must be obtained AFTER going though customs at the departure airport, and must be in sealed and tamper-proof containers. The reasons for this are surely obvious.
As a scenario, say you board the plane for Denpasar in Sydney, or whatever and you by 2 litres of plonk - they're in an open container, and you could do anything with them; exchange them for petrol, nitro glycerine ??
When we were at Changi en route for Denpasar, there was a woman passenger from Adelaide with an open bag having 2 bottles of vodka, trying to persuade the departure duty-free shop to change the bag to a sealed container, so that she could get them through DPS customs. I hope she was NOT successful.
As for your complaining passengers - well, how do you know their motives? And why would you not be pleased that the rules are enforced for YOUR safety? Think about it. Incidentally, I thought Jetstar was an airline, and thus has no authority to confiscate anything. But customs sure do, and thank goodness for that - at least this gives you and I a reasonable chance of arriving in one piece.
And as for smashing bottles? Well, why? How stupid can you get? Annoyance because they got caught trying to bend the rules? OK, I'll amend my opinion from 'Don't believe a word' to 'Ignorant people will never change'.
And I don't care if Indonesian customs enjoyed their liquor - most are Muslim anyway. Hopefully they made a few Rupiah flogging it off to stupid tourists?
Try to grasp the wider picture. It's not about venal customs officers, nor is it about apocryphal strutting Australiana. I's about YOUR safety.