FibreJoy's Blog

… you want them confiscated, or want to be moved to … first class!

We’ve just come back home from vacation in Mexico. Several glorious hot sunny days in Akumal, about 100 km south of Cancun.

As I always do, I took my knitting with me. This time it was the Skew socks by Lana Holden, I am knitting with Lorna’s Laces Shepherd Sock Multi in colour ‘102 – Mineshaft’, I got from Laura Chau‘s detash a while ago.

Before leaving Toronto, I had checked the most recent Canadian air safety regulations on this website under their ‘Permitted and non-permitted items’. Since for ‘Knitting needles and crochet hooks’, it says they are allowed in the checked luggage AND carry on, I thought it would be safe to bring my KnitPicks circulars with me. I love these needles and love knitting socks with them.

Well… what I missed was to also check Mexican regulations regarding the very same items. When we were going through security checking in our way back, a young lady says I cannot carry my knitting needles with me. I should go back to the check-in counter to put them in my suitcase, or then say good bye to them. We told the security lady -who was actually very polite and was doing her job well- that our suitcase might have already been gone, and I did not want to leave them behind. A supervisor showed up, and after my husband suggested we gave my knitting bag to an airline coordinator, so they could give it to a flight attendant, he finally agreed. I was not so happy I would not be able to knit during our 3 hour flight, but was actually grateful I did not loose my needles.

We were introduced to the flight coordinator, who would be giving my small knitting bag to a flight attendant, with the condition that they gave me the knitting needles only after arriving in Toronto. This was a super nice lady, who complimented me on my knitting, and proceeded to carry my knitting bag all over the airport to finally arrive at the AirTransat boarding desk. We I happened to follow her around, and this is what we I saw:

At this point the security ladies opened my bag and discussed my knitting. I wonder what they said about it… Then they put it aside and continued chatting:

Only a few minutes later, while we were waiting to board the plane, the flight coordinator arrives at the boarding desk, and then she approaches to talk to us. She asks for our boarding passes and gives us 2 new ones, saying that we had been moved to first class! At first, we did not understand what she was talking about, even though we were all speaking Spanish! Then she said my knitting bag had been delivered to a flight attendant, and we were now flying in first class.

Wow! Never having flown in first class before, we happily agreed, even recognizing that AirTransat was not responsible for the inconvenience caused to us because of the knitting needles incident.

Lucky us?… oh, yes we were… One interesting thing to notice is that we I did NOT have any issues last year, when we went to the very same place for vacation!

Oh well… we flew back home feeling very well taken care of, AND I got to knit on the plane, as I was given my knitting back as soon as we boarded…

Happily knitting again!