Baggage Reclaim

Is an example of a broken – or indeed never created – social structure, and an illustration of the “tragedy of the commons”.    The usual process for reclaiming one’s hold baggage after a flight is that the baggage handlers bring it to the baggage reclaim hall, where it is put on a long, narrow oval belt, suitcase by suitcase, for the passengers to retrieve.    I did experience a different technique on an internal Turkish flight, where they just unloaded it all onto the tarmac by the plane, and let the passengers wander around it until they found their bag, but this is uncommon.  

A couple of hundred passengers waiting for their luggage, and for any one traveller, it makes sense for them to stand right next to the belt, where they can see their suitcase easily as soon as it appears,  grab it as it goes past, and (they hope) remove it from the belt ready to continue their journey.   However, what makes sense for one person fails to work well for the collective.   Passengers stand next to the belt, which means that those who are not next to the belt can neither see their luggage easily when it appears, nor retrieve it when they do spot it.   So they stand close behind those next to the belt, two or three deep, which means that those who are next to the belt, when they do grab their suitcase, cannot remove it because they are fenced in with people next to them and behind them.     Add to the mix the expectation ( usually false, but always there) that the airline has decided to send your luggage to Timbuctoo or simply failed to load it on the aircraft in the first place, and you have a recipe for a very uncomfortable social situation.  It’s amazing that it nearly always works out, somehow, and people end up with their suitcases, usually without too much delay.

The obvious, collective answer would be for people to stand 1 or 2 metres away from the belt,  allowing plenty of room for those who have spotted their suitcase to walk forward, and easily remove the suitcase from the belt, also providing much more space for people to see what was going past.   Why doesn’t this happen?   Is it just because it makes sense for the individual traveller to be right next to the belt?  Perhaps it’s because air travel is still a relatively infrequent experience for nearly everyone, so there is little opportunity for a social convention to develop?     

When waiting for buses, particularly in the UK, the social convention is to form an orderly queue, and get on the bus in turn, even though it might be better for an individual traveller to just rush to the front.  It’s a similar situation, and perhaps the fact that bus travel is an everyday experience for many – so much so that others in the queue may be acquaintances – makes the difference.   The combination of the rarity of the air travel experience and the fact that one will probably never see any of one’s fellow air travellers again may make the difference.    Or is it to do with early socialisation?  Mum explains to her children how to behave in a bus queue, but it doesn’t happen for baggage reclaim.

 

Fear

It’s not always rational, but there usually is some sense to it, so it’s difficult to disentangle what’s reasonable and real from the superstructure that isn’t.   This is a story about being terrified while diving.

I am a very experienced snorkeller, and have reasonable experience with Scuba, having learnt quite young, trained with UK sub aqua clubs, and I have PADI advanced open water diver certification.  I’m generally comfortable and at home under the water, it’s not a threatening place for me.   

I was on a diving holiday in the Red Sea, on a “liveaboard”.   A liveaboard is a dive boat on which one lives, and pretty much you do nothing but dive.    Three or four dives a day, food and sleep in between,  while the boat moves from site to site.  It’s a very easy form of diving holiday, because your kit lives on the dive deck, and doesn’t need to be moved around, loaded, unloaded and carried from place to place.  You go out to the diving area, kit up, check it’s all working properly, and jump off the back.   It’s simple.

On this particular day we did a “drift dive” during the day.  We started off on a wreck at about 20metres deep, and after about 20 minutes looking round that,  let the current take us along the reef wall.   It was quite fast.  At a couple of points I tried finning against the current, but could only just maintain position, I couldn’t make any headway against it. 

I should say at this point that I was holidaying on my own.  Scuba is not something my partner enjoys, and there is nothing else to do on a liveaboard, so it would be a real penance for someone who didn’t enjoy it to spend a “holiday” like that.  It wouldn’t have been really warm enough for sun-bathing, even. 

So I was buddied up with someone I didn’t really know well; he obviously didn’t feel any need to be at all close, as when I looked back he was almost invisible in the blue.  There were some other divers ahead, so I assumed that when we eventually surfaced, the RIBs would come and pick us up.   A RIB is a Rigid inflatable boat, like 2 big rubber tubes, a plywood deck between, and an outboard motor on the back.  

So after about 20 minutes drifting, dive time of about 40 minutes, I surfaced, found some other divers on the surface, popped some air into my jacket, and waited.   I could see the RIBs cruising around, and after a while they spotted us, came over and picked us up.     So that was all fine – but I had been a bit worried as we drifted along the reef.  Would they find us?  These worries fuelled what happened later.

 

That evening, we anchored with two similar liveaboard boats, one of which was the Typhoon, sister ship to the MV Whirlwind, which was where I was living, in a sort of bay area.   We planned to do a night dive that evening, and I borrowed a high power torch from one of the other divers, and I was buddied with the rather detached individual I’d been with in the dive I’ve just talked about, and one of the dive leaders, again rather detached.    So, we kitted up, and went in.  They put a bright repeating light at 5 & 15 metres on a shot line under the boat to help us find our way back.  Off we went, sinking into the blackness, and I was watching the fins of the dive leader to keep in touch with him.    Once we reached the bottom, it seemed to get quite busy, maybe a dozen divers, and quite a lot to look at.

The confusion cleared a bit, and I carried on following the diveleader, who I recognised by his fins, which were unusual.   We all swam around, looking at things, enjoying the dive. Then I realised that the other buddy in the 3 was not who I thought he was.   Oh.  I then realised that I had no idea who these two divers were, nor where my “buddies” had gone.   I wasn’t even sure if they were divers from my boat!   I remembered that the tanks had the boat name on the top, so I caught up with them and looked.   Both had Whirlwind, written on the their tanks, so at least I could stick with them, and after a while hope they would know the way back to the boat.   The dive continued, and there was much interesting wildlife to enjoy.  I saw a “Spanish Dancer”, a large mollusc/flatworm with a dark red velvety texture body, and a pink edge, looking much like the skirts of a flamenco dancer with petticoats showing at the hem.  Beautiful.   Spotted stingrays,  lion fish, quite an aquarium.    Time crept on, and my air started to hover around “time to surface” levels.  My companions were also clearly now thinking more about return, than the wildlife, but it was clear from their body language that they had no idea where the boat was.   And I started to wonder where we were, too.   Had we got out of the relatively protected bay into a current?   I watched them for a short while, then decided that whatever they did, I needed to surface, and hope the boat was somewhere in site.    Underwater in the dark, once you can’t see the surface or the bottom, the only way you know which way is up is by watching which way the bubbles go.   So, slowly I ascended to  the 5metre safety stop level on my own.  I’d hoped that once I was nearer the surface I’d be able to see the lights of the boats, or even better the repeater light on the shot line through the water, but there was nothing.  Just black all round, the moonlight reflecting on the water 5m above me, my depth gauge and dive computer to look at, counting down the 3 minutes till I could surface. 

And the fear.   The expectation that when I eventually did surface, all I would see would be the sky, the stars, and the waves.  No boat, nothing.    I knew what to do, of course, if that happened.  I would use my surface marker buoy (an orange cylinder about 1metre long by 10cm, blow it up, using some air from my tank, hold it under water at the open end to make it stick up above the water, and use my torch underneath it to light it up inside.    Blow up my buoyancy jacket, and wait to be picked up by one of the RIBs.   But I didn’t believe it.  I was terrified.    Floating in the black, waiting, telling my self it would be ok.

At last the 3 minutes were over.  A few fin kicks and I was on the surface.  I looked around, and about 200 metres away the boats were floating, lights glowing over the water.   So I headed straight for them.  

When I arrived, one of the women from the Norfolk diveclub who were on the boat came down to the dive deck to welcome me back.   She had been looking out for me from one of the higher decks, and spotted me when I surfaced by my yellow fins.   It was very warming to be cared about like that.  The empathy, the understanding that someone might very well be objectively safe, but still very frightened, made me feel better almost straightaway.

    It didn’t matter that the fear was unfounded, it was totally real for me.