15 June 2022
Search and denied
Departing Seoul from Incheon airport
Now I am in Singapore. Airports are not like they used to be.
First of all getting to Incheon airport took a really long time. The no stop train was not running, the all stops train seemed to go slow, perhaps because there is torrential rain, on the day I am leaving.
Still I was at the airport about 2.5 hours before my flight, which was more than enough time.
Luckily despite not flying since covid started until this trip I can still use all the wanker lines etc, so there is no line, except... the girl seemed very confused about the Australian digital passenger declaration, and phoned someone, then asked someone, it was flagged in her system as required for boarding, and I showed it to her. So after some time they put my check in bag on the thing and tell me to wait 2 minutes.
I wait. Then I have to go into another room, and they are confused as to why, so they do a full bag search not knowing what they are looking for. That took 20 minutes or so.
Then I go to the pre customs line where they check you have a ticket and a passport before letting you into customs, scan my passport, and tell me I cannot board, I have been denied boarding.
Cool.
So I go back to the Singapore counter and tell them you have denied me boarding, why? They only speak Korean, so they have to get someone, they cannot understand why I was denied boarding, and a lady escorted me to the place I was denied and had a very agitated chat with the lady that denied me, and I was allowed through.
Thankfully after that the actual hand luggage scan and customs bit was uneventful.
The flight was completely full, descending into Singapore was fun because there were storms in the vicinity so we did a spiral descent of 3 full circles.
Now I am in the brand new gold lounge, which is a rung below the silver kris lounge I was allowed to use on the way here. Food is crap, but it is free so I should not complain.
6 hours until my next flight then it is time to hand over all my electronic devices to BORDER FORCE who may or may not have any actual rights to do anything with my electronic devices if I do not let them.
Incheon airport is still not very busy, although I think Korea has upped the cap on flights above 25% pre covid levels now.
Lots of parts of the airport are closed down. Here is the main food court. There are no lounges open. I got a coffee from Baskin Robbins, the ice cream shop, the only actual coffee shop open had about 9000 people wanting a coffee.
My plane is here, so that is good. Check out the rain for my send off.
I had enough time to complete the giant lego maze before boarding.
And now, here is the opened 2 weeks ago Singapore airlines gold lounge for partner airline flight ELITE STATUS wankers like me which as mentioned above is nowhere near as nice as the actual Singapore airlines silver kris lounge for people that earned their wanker status on Singapore airlines flights. That is enough for now.