Planning to Propose Abroad? You Need to Fly Through East Midlands Airport!

Someone at East Midlands Airport in the UK deserves a pay rise. The airport sees a lot of nervous young men passing through security, but not for the reasons you might expect.

They’re planning to surprise the ladies in their lives with a proposal while on vacation, you see. And keep it as the romantic surprise it should be, they need to get a certain secret jewellery item through customs without their other half realising.

After all, the last thing you want is for a little black box to be pulled out of your bag while your partner waits, right?

Enter the safe word scheme!

What is it? Well, anyone who has a surprise ring in their luggage can mention a certain word to security staff when they’re checking in, and they will make sure to be discreet when undertaking the usual procedures.

To find out what the magic word is, you need to send an email to a dedicated address first. You need to be able to prove that you’re actually travelling through the airport to a team of ‘cupid’s little helpers’ before they’ll reveal the secret password. We’re assuming they change the word on the regular too, for any suspicious ladies out there.

The system proved to be especially popular around Valentine’s Day, when around 90,000 people travelled through the airport. Sadly, we don’t know how many of those took advantage of the safe word system.