The Friendly Skies

The oddest thing on the UK trip a couple of weeks back — for me, anyway — was as we were going through Heathrow passport control after an eleven-hour trip. The line was long, although it moved fairly rapidly, and we’d already filled out our entry forms hours before, but halfway through the maze there was a high table with blank forms on it.

On the table was a small box with flaps on either end that has been opened and you could see the contents matched with the exterior. The artwork on the cover was for a plastic airplane model of a Boeing 747. The box was labelled in both English and Arabic. The decals on the plane were for Iran Air.