Knowledge is power

I recently flew to the US for business and upon my return to Canada, I realized that there is a huge difference between airports in the two countries. I am not talking about the security checks that are very similar in both countries and in fact, I almost always had the Canadian customs people give me a harder time than their US counterparts. The difference I am talking about is in the overall atmosphere in the terminals.

I arrived at the Vancouver International airport early in the evening. Upon exiting the plane, all passengers entered the relatively new international terminal and proceeded to the customs area. Along the way, we walked through a nicely decorated terminal with native art, running water, plants and bird sounds playing in the background. A perfect environment to welcome visitors to Canada and help them relax after a long flight.

My experience at the Phoenix, San Fransisco and San Diego airports was very different. The terminals in those airports are always very noisy. And it is not just the people running around trying to catch their flights who make all the noise. It is mostly the automated voice prompts that seems to be everywhere. Every few seconds a female voice would inform us of the current terror alert level and what law abiding citizens should do if they suspect a terrorist act was about to take place in the area. And this, I guess, is expected considering that the country is at war. But then, everything around the airport had some kind of warning informing unsuspecting passengers that their lives were constantly in danger. For example, the escalators had automated voices telling users that stepping on or off the escalator was extremely dangerous. Moreover, just about anything one could purchase in the millions of stores in the terminals had some kind of warning that the product could cause cancer and pregnant women to miscarry. This is just the result of a society that has way to many lawyers. The warnings are there to tell people that if shit happens to them then the airports are not responsible; after all, they did warn us that the escalator is a deathtrap in disguise and yet we still went ahead and used it. Lesson learned, I guess!

I’m glad that I am back in Canada!