Common Sense At Zurich Airport

We're now in the SwissAir Lounge waiting to board our flight in about half an hour.

United e-mailed us boarding passes, even though we hadn't requested them, yet another of many glitches in their system.

At the counter this morning it took the diligent SwissAir agent, working with a reference manual, colleagues, and a supervisor, simply to seat us together on the second flight, for which the plane had been downgraded from a 767 to a smaller 757. This is, of course, a United station so we weren't asking for anything out of the ordinary.

It's obvious how frustrated the front-line employees are. One other little vignette...

Just after we passed through the very civilized check point with our shoes on, we noticed, while putting our items away, that a security employee was holding a Swiss Army pen knife that she'd removed from the carry-on bag of an elderly couple. She spoke to them quietly for a few moments and then returned the knife to their bag.

We're guessing she was warning them that it could have been confiscated. No, we won't be worried if this couple and their pen knife are on our flight. It's sad we have to travel abroad to see common sense employed at airport security check points.