1. I am flying on an airline called Fly540 which from what I understand is Kenya's version of Southwest Airlines. My flight to Mombasa which will take about 45 minutes cost me $55 USD which I thought was very reasonable. The same flight on Kenya Airways costs over $200 USD ... I don't know how they manage to keep those prices and compete with Fly540. However, I haven't been on a Fly540 plane yet, so it's possible that I'll figure out why it's so cheap once I board ... maybe I'll have to pedal :)
2. Airport security is a bit more relaxed here. I have 4 inch knife with me which I put in the bag I was planning on checking. At this airport you go through the X-ray machine before you are even allowed to enter the terminal, which means you go through X-ray before you have gotten your ticket or checked your bag. The security staff noticed my knife as it appeared on the screen and asked me "Do you have a knife in your bag?" to which I responded "Yes, but I am going to check it" ... they smiled and sent me on my way. I am now sitting next to my gate and I other than that first X-ray machine I haven't had my bags scanned or checked again ... which means that they have no way of knowing whether or not I actually checked the knife (I did check it). I just thought that was interesting, in Kenya's defense I think their security is probably just as good as ours they just don't go to as much trouble to give off the "illusion of security" that we do. In fact when we were on our way to Kenya in June, one of my fellow travelers came up to me during our layover in the Heathrow airport and said "I just found a 5 inch knife in my carry-on that I forgot was there, what should I do?" ... so U.S. security totally dropped the ball on that one.
3. The Fly540 staff at the ticketing counter didn't use a computer to assign me a seat or give me my boarding pass. My boarding pass looks like a normal U.S. boarding pass except that where you would normally have printed information telling you what your flight#/seat#/etc.. are there is hand-written ink. When I checked in I walked up to the counter and asked if I could have a window seat. They consulted a piece of paper that had a diagram of the plane's seats, saw that one hadn't been crossed off yet and then told me I could. They then crossed off that seat and scrawled some info onto my boarding pass and handed it over. The whole process reminded me of how I am used to getting a table at a restaurant, it certainly works fine for boarding a plane but I'm just used to having computers a little more involved in the process.
4. The gate I am sitting at now is pretty similar to gates in any small U.S. airport. There is no jetway, when I go through the gate I will walk out onto the tarmac and then go up a set of steps to board the plane. The thing I find striking about this gate is the noise factor. There are quite a few planes in close proximity to where I am and the doors between the building and the tarmac are left open at all times. This means that when the planes are revving up their engines it gets really quite loud in here, far louder than any airport I have been in before. I have also noticed that none of the airport workers out on the tarmac are wearing any ear protection which is a different sight when you are used to the the large headphone-like ear-protectors that American airport staff wear.
Well, that's all for now. I'm hoping that my hotel in Mombasa will have internet access, if it does I'll finish up this post and get it up on online for all my devoted readers to see :)
So, you have probably figured out that I made it to Mombasa and found a way to get internet access. They have wireless in the rooms ... it's really slow but it works. I hope you are enjoying these posts, because it takes a while to put them up :)
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