Passenger Check-in Officer
Lydd Airport

Coral N

00:00:03 My name is Coral N, and I work in Passenger Check In at Lydd Airport. And it involves searching passengers, checking in passengers, checking in their baggage, searching their baggage. This is a metal detector that we use to search people, usually if they make the security archway metal detector beep. If there’s anything visual that we can see straightaway that would have set off the machine, then we’d use this. And then hand search them as well to make sure that they’ve got nothing else on them.

00:00:32 I had one incident where we had a gentleman we were checking in, and he wouldn’t let go of the baggage. He was in a wheelchair. And we had to call the armed police on him, because we need to check everyone’s baggage. So that was quite an experience.

00:00:45 I was working in a nursery after I left college, and I was offered more money – a part time job I was doing it at the weekend in a golf club. So I went there full-time. And then I heard through a friend about the job – a job in catering at the Airport. And I applied for that, and got that. And then after about a month or so working in the restaurant, the MD and all the staff noticed that I was a nice, good worker, hard worker, and they needed a job for the Passenger Check In, and so they interviewed me for that. And I moved up to Passenger Check In.

00:01:19 I went to an all girls school, so it was quite hard sometimes. I’d try and keep my head down, but with all girls it’s a bit hard, you can get misled sometimes. I was a hard worker, I always have been, and always get my work done in time. I enjoyed Drama, Geography I liked at school, and Maths, I’ve always been really good at Maths, I think I got that from my Dad.

00:01:44 I went from school to college, to do a Child Care course, and wanted to go to Uni from college, to do teaching. But due to family problems, not doing so well in college as I’d hoped to, due to the problems, I didn’t get the grades I wanted, and then couldn’t go to University. So then looked for work straight after college.

00:02:08 My Mum and Dad split up, so I had to grow up quite quick. I’ve got a younger sister, used to kind of play the – have to play the motherly role for my sister. My brother got into drugs and – and that kind of affected my college work. But then realising that – working here, I kind of realised that I didn’t even think that I wanted to work with children any more anyway. And never would have thought that I would have worked in aviation, but now I’m here, like I love it.

00:02:36 When I’m not working I go to the gym, when I can be bothered, I haven’t gone in the last couple of weeks, I should get back into it really. Some para gliding. I’d like to do a bungee jump, but just I’ve never had the chance. I’ve been up in a couple of the little Pipers that we’ve got outside. It’s just like driving a car but you have no pedals or anything, I just literally had the wheel – and you tip it like a tiny bit and you start going down, and pull it up a bit and you start going up again. It’s really good.

00:03:03 If the Airport expanded we would have bigger jets in, we would have a lot more passenger movements, flying to places other than just Le Touquet. So hopefully I would like to go into an operational – operational job, which would be dealing with the aircraft, dealing with the loading of the aircraft, and the passengers, I’d still like to be involved in the passengers.

00:03:27 I think my Dad has inspired me. He’s self employed, he’s got now three men working for him, a couple of vans, his own business. So he’s inspired me in, you know, I’d say the work aspect of things.

00:03:39 ENDS