Ask the pilot

I took some pictures at the airport -- and fell into the clutches of bureaucrats mouthing the cheap prose of patriotic convenience.

By Patrick Smith

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Feb. 10, 2006 | It was 1986, as our Finnair DC-9 descended through the midwinter overcast above Moscow. The captain came on to make the usual pre-landing announcement, this time with an addition: "Ladies and gentlemen, photography through the aircraft windows, or anywhere at the Moscow airport once we land, is forbidden." A stewardess then walked down the aisle, making sure we all had our cameras put away.

From 10,000 feet, the landscape below was hardly photogenic -- sky, clouds and terrain merging in a featureless curtain of gunmetal gray. But the captain's warning wasn't a surprise, flavoring our arrival with a little Cold War excitement. This was, after all, communist Russia, and photography at public installations was, everyone knew, strictly off limits. As tourists from the so-called free world, we expected some firsthand experience with the constraints of Soviet society. But while the rules made good stories for friends back home, for an airplane buff they were highly vexing; I so badly wanted a picture of the Tupolev jet we'd later ride to Leningrad -- the terminal guard waving his finger as I gestured hopefully with my dad's old Minolta. It all seemed excessive, really.

Skip forward 20 years. It's January 2006, and I'm at the airport in Manchester, N.H. This is a state, mind you, famous for its fiery brand of New England individualism -- a haven for refugees from big-government tyrannies, like that sweltering welfare state to the south, Massachusetts. Here, license plates cry liberty in no uncertain terms: "Live Free or Die."

There's a shiny new airport in Manchester, and I'm there to take pictures as part of an article I'm working on for that mouthpiece of liberal fascism, the Boston Globe. I've shot about six digital pictures, and I'm working on the seventh -- a nicely framed view of the terminal façade -- when I hear the stern "Excuse me." A young guy in a navy windbreaker steps toward me. It says AIRPORT SECURITY in block letters across his back. "You can't do that. You need to put the camera away."

"I do? Why?"

"Pictures aren't allowed."

"They're not?"

"Sorry."

"Sorry what? I don't think that's true, actually. I'm pretty sure that it isn't illegal to take pictures at an airport."

"You'll need to talk to a deputy, sir."

I slip the camera into a pocket as the guard, who despite his crested cap and cocksure understanding of the rules, is a private security guard and not a law enforcement official, quickly summons over two members of the Rockingham County sheriff's department, which administers the Manchester airport.

The deputies -- a woman and a man -- are polite but stern, and they'd like to know exactly what I'm doing. "You need to have a permit to take photographs," one of them says. "Maybe we can call and see if they'll give you clearance."

I'm not sure I believe it. "What do I need a permit for? Is there a rule here against taking pictures? Is it illegal?"

"I don't know," she replies, crossly, as if the question somehow isn't relevant. "I don't think so, technically."

"So, if not, why would I need a permit?"

"That's what the airport wants. You'll have to ask the airport manager."

They ask to see press credentials. When I explain that I'm a freelancer they demand a driver's license. The woman deputy takes it and disappears for several minutes.

While waiting for my license to return from its secret mission, I tell the other officer how this is the same airport where, in 1986, I received my private pilot's license. From runway 35, four years later, I made my first takeoff as a cockpit crewmember. It's all very different now, in more ways than one. And I tell him how, as adolescent planespotters in the late '70s, my friends and I would scour the terminals at Boston-Logan every weekend, armed with cameras, notebooks and binoculars, taking pictures and logging tail numbers, fully aware that in many countries, hobbies like ours were essentially illegal.

The cop shakes his head. He's an older guy, who probably remembers when MHT had two flights a day with 15-seaters, before Southwest came in with seven gates and nonstops to Vegas. "I know," he says. "It's too bad. But we live in a different world now."

Soon thereafter my license reappears and I'm free to go. "May I use my camera?"

"Yes," is the answer, so long as I don't take any photos inside the terminal. And next time, it would behoove me to receive permission before arriving.

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