I pounced on the woman just as she approached the airport boarding gate.
Wasn't hard to pin her. She was already exhausted from dragging a "carry-on" bag the size of a Smart Car. Also, her feet were caught up in her habit.
"Citizen's arrest," I barked. "Baggage violation!"
A uniformed security guard intervened: "Let her go."
Let her go? This was like the time the cops hung up on me after I called 911. (Since when is it "not a crime" to break the 10-items-or-less rule at the grocers?) Forgive the overzealousness, but I'm still a tad giddy about Air Canada's crackdown on those who break the airline's carry-on limits.
It started in Toronto on Monday and will spread to other airports in June. If your bag fits inside the metal measuring frame, it gets a red tag and you may take it into the airplane cabin. If it doesn't, you will be dragged outside and drowned in a bucket of de-icing fluid. Or something like that.
The clampdown comes as a relief to those who are tired of seeing pre-boarding lineups that resemble refugees fleeing the fall of Caporetto in 1917, passengers with all their worldly possessions heaped upon their backs. Victoria International Airport has seen people try to brazen their way through with everything but the kitchen sink.
OK, that's not quite true. Jean Jacobson, who oversees the Victoria airport security screening staff, says someone actually did try to take a sink on board last week. I'm not making this up. Last Sunday, they saw another passenger who could barely drag his carry-on luggage to the gate; it contained two large pieces of granite.
They also get sewing machines, bread makers and toaster ovens ("You never know when you might need to prepare a quick meal mid-flight," Jacobson says), not to mention the garden-variety families of four who try to bluff through with eight suitcases as the single-bag traveller behind them rolls his eyes. (Speaking of eye-rolling, Victoria airport security has also seen a big increase in carry-on sex toys recently, though that's probably a subject for another column.)
Some passengers complain the carry-on crackdown means they'll have to buy new luggage because their old stuff no longer fits, but the size limits haven't changed. Air Canada is just enforcing them now. (Passengers are allowed one bag measuring up to 23 by 40 by 55 centimetres, plus a personal item such as a briefcase or laptop computer measuring up to 16 by 33 by 43).
Blaming Air Canada for making you buy new bags is like blaming McDonald's when your pants are too small.
Some passengers feel flouting the carry-on rules is justified, given the never-ending nickel-and-diming by the airlines - $25 checked-luggage charges, seat-selection fees and what-not. Any flyer can sympathize with that.
Except the carry-on war isn't really between passengers and the airlines, is it? In reality, it's passenger versus passenger, you fighting to squeeze your backpack into the same overhead bin filled by your seatmate's steamer trunk.
And because the competition for luggage space is such a free-for-all, passengers ignore the instructions to board the plane according to seat row.
Instead, they rush the gate like one of those Black Friday Walmart shopping riots in Arkansas, except this time they're hauling a mountain of bags in, not out. The handful of stragglers who patiently wait their turn find themselves SOL (sitting on luggage) waiting in vain for an air marshall to pop up and fire a couple of rounds into the rule-breakers.
This unchecked lawlessness offends our sense of justice.
Canadians are an orderly, egalitarian bunch. We wait our turn at bus stops. We try to park within the lines. We live largely free of the corruption that plagues other countries and international soccer federations.
We like our health-care single-tiered, with everybody sharing the same 10-month wait for a spot in the pre-natal clinic.
This is why, when at the ferry terminal, we chortle and high-five our fellow drivers every time the Voice of God booms out of the public address system and sends queue-jumpers skulking to the back of the line. ("You in the grey Jaguar, get thee to a nunnery!")
If the rest of the justice system shared B.C. Ferries' approach - swift, certain, impartial - the world would be a fairer place.
Until then, keep calm and carry on.
