Do you lament for the pre-September 11th days of air travel? Rarely did you find long security lines, you didn’t have to take off your shoes, you could carry-on whatever liquids you wanted, and had to only show your ID once at the airport…
Well, come on over to Japan for some security-relaxed domestic air travel.
During the past 6 months I’ve taken two domestic trips via airplane — one to Miyazaki for the Fall 2007 Infinity Ventures Summit and just this past week to Okinawa’s (Tokashiki) Tokashiku Island for a family vacation at the beach. Both departed from Tokyo’s convenient Haneda Airport.
I used to believe that Japanese people often prefer domestic travel because of language/culture barriers — now, I’m rather convinced it is at least partly because of the relatively delightful experience.
Here were my observations regarding security:
- Never once had my ID checked by JAL, ANA, and Skymark (which is a new budget airline and was excellent, will definitely use them again).
- Brought multiple drinks on the plane with me. Once a security person did ask politely if he could put a bottle through a fancy bottle checking machine which took about 5 seconds.
- No mention or need to put liquids into a ziplock bag.
- Laptop did have to come out at security check-point but was allowed to stay in neoprene case.
I never once felt unsafe, but I rarely feel unsafe in Japan (touch wood)… I’m not saying that the US (or UK, etc.) are doing anything wrong. I actually have often found security personnel worldover to be acceptably polite and reasonable.
But — overall the domestic air travel experience here is just better with more relaxed security and these “nice things”:
- If you like, you can check-in with your (Sony) Felica-based frequent-flyer account (which can be run as an application on your mobile telephone so no need for a card at all). Many people seem to use this.
- JAL used a nice/huge 747-400 (doubledecker) used for a < 2.5 hour domestic flight from Haneda (Tokyo) to Naha (Okinawa).
- The airports I visited had a wide variety of rather decent (dare I say “very good”) restaurants at very fair prices.
- The politeness/friendliness of domestic flight attendants and check-in staff is just as good as the (high quality) international staff. This includes Skymark, which has been described to me as the “JetBlue” of Japan but I couldn’t really tell a difference between Skymark and ANA/JAL.
