Will BIA be less sticky?

If you happen to be at an airport outside of Sri Lanka and you see someone you think you might know, what’s the easiest way to know if they are Sri Lankan or have been to Sri Lanka? Let me tell you how.

Their luggage has been defaced and ruined due to their departure from BIA. How? The BIA places the world’s ‘stickiest’ adhesive label to each and every bag and guess where they put it, directly over the main zipper of the bag!

I travel extensively for work purposes and I can hand on heart say, the number one reason why I have to replace my luggage is these wretched stickers!

Please could you kindly explain to me what the purposes of these stickers are? What benefit do they offer us passengers and or BIA? Are they really keeping us safe? Are there no better ways of screening luggage?

Why do my kid’s strollers (being taken into the cabin as hand luggage with us) need these stickers? Why is BIA the only airport in the world that requires this security procedure?

How much do these stickers cost the airport to manufacture and apply? How do other modern airports operate without a single sticker / single security officer needed to apply stickers? BIA pays a complete salary for someone to solely place these stickers on bags!

I mean not just the sticker, why do you require two screenings? You screen all the bags at the entrance, then again, before you can even get to a check-in counter you’re rescreened. At this second screening the wretched sticker is applied to every bag you’re travelling with. You might as well put one on my forehead!

I urge BIA to kindly try to live up to international standards. Why would you spend hundreds and thousands of rupees on these stickers every year when there’s so much additional infrastructure that these resources could be spent on?

Are you really proclaiming that our security procedures are so advanced that we’re the only airport in the world to require them or is it what I assume it is – some terrible logic that adds zero value but causes us all utter embarrassment and serious cost to every traveller having to replace our luggage due to zipper malfunctions directly caused by the sticker getting stuck in the threads of the zipper?

I personally stopped buying longer lasting luggage solely due to this sticker. Maybe us Sri Lankans should use disposable cardboard boxes to fly out of BIA?

Please try to stop this procedure and find a more reasonable and respectable way of screening bags at BIA.

Overall, it is just an embarrassment and complete and utter waste of resources, is my humble opinion.

A concerned traveller