5 Ways to Make Your Airport Experience as Fuss-Free as Possible

Dread airports and their pre-travel processes? These five ways will make your experience as fuss-free and uneventful as possible

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Regulations concerning aerosols, liquids and gel in carry-on luggage are about as easy to understand as tax laws. You are best to avoid them altogether. A model I once worked with had an expensive bottle of fake tan confiscated moments before she boarded a flight to Hawaii. The shoot was a disaster and her career lost its puff. Another thing: if you’ve bought a duty-free item at the airport, don’t get too excited and tear open its sealed bag before you board your flight. Doing so could mean the item loses its duty-free status.

SECURITY CHECKS

Remove belt, watch, sunglasses and jacket, and place them in a tray for X-ray screening before you walk through the metal detector. It saves a lot of time. Don’t fidget or scratch — that’s what drug mules on the Border Security reality TV show do. Don’t joke about guns and bombs. When a passenger made a crack about C4 explosives at Miami International Airport, the airport was evacuated and the joker in question copped a $US90,000 fine.

CLEARING CUSTOMS

Double-sided paper has been around for hundreds of years, yet customs officers in Australia seem to spend half their time asking airline passengers to sign the back of their arrival form. Save them the trouble and fill yours in properly before your flight touches down. And a word to the wise: remove any raunchy photos of yourself that appear on websites linked to your PayPal account. In 2014, an American transgender woman’s Australian tourist visa was cancelled after immigration officers found an explicit online advertisement showing photographs of her posing suggestively.

BOARDING TIME

You’re in a crowded departure lounge with half an hour to wait until your gate opens, but all the seats are taken. So you find a cafe and order an iced coffee. Wherever you plonk yourself, keep an eye on the gate and pay attention to the droning voice on the airport’s PA system. Gate departures can change like the weather. Nashville International Airport has nailed it — recorded voices of country singers are used to make announcements.

AVOID MORNING RUSH HOUR

Babies scream, machines are down, and people are pushing in from a dozen different directions. No, it’s not a landing strip in a war zone, it’s Sydney International Airport every day at 6am after the nightly curfew ends and thousands of passengers try squeezing through immigration at the same time. Try to avoid flights that land in Sydney at this time. But just before curfew ends at 11pm is a dream — you practically waltz right through immigration.

Read Original Story at Courier Mail.