Passengers at Nice Côte d’Azur Airport can now ‘deposit’ prohibited items

PROHIBITED: Many flyers don't even realise they are carrying banned items

Passengers flying from Nice Côte d’Azur Airport could be given the chance to spare items confiscated at security from being thrown in the bin.

From Tuesday, security staff at the international airport will offer passengers several options on what might be done with items banned from the cabin (such as sharps and containers or bottles over 100ml).

These will still include a choice between destruction, collection by a trusted person and registration as hold baggage, as it did before, but now there will be another to add to the list – a new and improved deposit service in partnership with Tripperty.

Nice Côte d’Azur Airport is France’s busiest airport outside of Paris, with 13.3 million passengers in 2017, 117 direct destinations and 54 scheduled airlines serving 40 countries.

This new service means the passenger can leave their confiscated item in standardised packaging, inside a secure container within the security zone itself. Passengers will then have 21 days to connect on the Tripperty website, use the secure online service, and indicate how they want to retrieve their deposited item:

• physical collection from the reception desk at the Safebag Services Centre in Terminal 2 
• delivery to their home or an address of their choice, within 48 hours following connection
• or donation to an association

On Tripperty’s website, the cheapest option, collecting the item from the airport, costs just €10. Delivery options vary depending on the distance, with deliveries in France costing €15, in Europe €20 and international deliveries costing €30. 

In August last year, Marseille Airport announced it was trialling Tripperty’s offering.

Over the Channel in the UK, research from the DirectLine Group found that £645 million worth of goods were confiscated or disposed of at UK airports over 12 months from September 2016, with an average of 81,000 items confiscated every day by UK airport security officials. Bottles of water were the most confiscated item. A quarter of passengers who had things confiscated did not remember the offending item was in their luggage.