Coming back from Windhoek we flew back through Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Ethiopian airlines. Checking in at Windhoek, the Ethiopian Airlines rep took us out of line with our forms to the police office to check our guns as we were leaving Namibia.

We already had our Ethiopian airlines gun forms filled out so he had the police sign them and took our forms and a copy of our 4457s to send to the Addis Ababa airport. He did not give us a copy so I asked him for it and he said that it wasn't necessary anymore, the policy is to scan the forms and wait for receipt confirmation.

DO NOT BELIEVE HIM! KEEP A COPY OF ALL THE FORMS.

When we got to Addis Ababa they didn't take us down to cargo to verify the serial numbers, like everyone said that they would. We bused out to board the plane on the taxiway and the airline guys drove out and pulled us off the plane to do it. We went down to cargo and they asked us for our forms to verify the serial numbers and we told them what the EA airlines guy did in Windhoek. That threw them into a lather and I told them that we had copies of our US form 4457s that we could verify the serial numbers with and that seemed to satisfy them and they took our forms. By the time we got it all done and they drove us back out to the plane with the gun cases, the plane was 15 minutes late leaving and everyone was waiting for us to re-board.

We wound up losing the two copies of the 4457s and I was glad that we had made a lot of copies and brought them with us.