Saturday, July 6, 2013

Friendly skies

The last time I was on a long multi-leg trip, it was the final flight that was the problem. This time it was all the rest. Our flight to Atlanta (of course) to catch the big bird to London was delayed by an hour before we even left the house. It eventually took off not quite two hours late. Luckily, it is not as hard to get out of our country as it is to get back in, and our overseas flight was almost an hour late taking off, so it all turned out okay. Apparently they pushed the throttles to the stops because we landed in the UK right on time.

Speaking of getting back in the country, when we landed at Heathrow there was a passport gate for EU Citizens that people were walking through sort of waving their passports, while foreigners stood in line with a zillion other people waiting for a manual passport check and light interrogation. Since we had been in row 41 on the plane, we got to watch 280 other people go before us. Luckily, when we reentered the U.S. at Atlanta -- no wait, it was worse! The foreigners were standing in a line shorter than ours, while the four agents manning the twenty-something U.S. citizen gates quizzed us about how long we were out of the country. I wanted to tell the guy it was none of his business, but assumed that would be counter-productive.

One benefit (maybe the only one) of being in a long queue is that it is a great opportunity to people watch. This time I was interested to see how opinions colored people's perception of our situation. I assumed that the dearth of passport control agents was likely a combination of budget cuts and some calculus concerning how long people would stand in line before becoming too unruly or missing their flights. The lady behind us seemed convinced that there was an agent for every gate, and the rest were apparently lazing around in the back somewhere. Probably playing dominoes. You know how union workers and bureaucrats love their dominoes.

After an hour at passport control, there is the ceremonial claiming of the bags and putting them on a different belt. I can think of no logical reason for this little ritual, except to give people a chance to stash their duty free liquids in their checked bags before going through security. Again.

None of this would have been a problem, except that we were an hour late getting to Atlanta. Only about 15 minutes of that was flying time. There was still a plane at our gate when we landed, and a few babies and old people decided they couldn't wait until we parked to pee, so we sat between two runways for about half an hour. As it was, we got to our gate in plenty of time, our plane left more or less on schedule, and the flight home was uneventful, which is exactly how I like them.

As air travel goes these days it wasn't bad. Except for one cranky little dude on the first overseas flight, the flight attendants were generally friendly, I got to catch up on a few movies, and the person in front of me never tried to lay their seat flat. There was a child under five either directly in front of or behind us on all four flights, but Biscuit got the brunt of that.

The final session of a conference. This room  was full on the first day. Most of the people remaining had something to do with organizing the thing, and are just waiting to receive their appreciation gift.
I will write about the rest of the trip when I get through the pictures, and can stay up later than 8:00 pm. Okay, not the conference so much. Not even my mother wants to hear about the conference.

6 comments:

  1. I haven't been on a plane in years, not since way before all the terrorist stuff began happening. My oldest son has always flown a lot with his job though and he says the U.S. is the worst. Still, he and his family flew home for this past week and he didn't mention anything about the flight. Sounds like it was okay for you as well. Maybe the situation is improving.

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    1. Flying does seem to be getting better, but from a level that was not quite as nice as taking the bus, and much more trouble. There is a long way to go before it's anywhere close to enjoyable.

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  2. conference? remind me what that is again?

    flight from Dulles to Munich on Lufthansa, in cattle car, was pretty uncomfortable. Middle seat, middle section of a wide body. ick. usually i can sleep on planes. this time not so much... still, a chance to drink beer in Munich en route to Istanbul made it sort of fun. Until we got to Istanbul and had a chance to smell ourselves after 30 hours of travel...

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    1. My flight to London last year was pretty uncomfortable. My knees just about touch the seat in front of me at the best of times, and I had quite large person in front of me trying to make their seat lie flat. I felt like I should be shampooing their hair. Needless to say, not much sleep on that one, and a meeting as soon as I landed.

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  3. Consider flying - anywhere - as paying your dues to the destination. Every flight we took to London was a horror story, but the final one was a true experiment in the theater of the absurd. Heathrow was socked in by a fog that was so thick even trains ran slow yet calls to the airline were typical in that they insisted we be there 'on time,' as much as we could be flying in a taxi without seeing the road.....of course at the end of the day of sitting in a terminal we were herded to a bus and driven to a hotel that had opened that day near the airport. A hotel with no power, no water, and nothing to eat. After a cold breakfast the next morning we were driven back to Heathrow and into chaos. Everyone who had waited for flights were desperate and highly annoyed. People had slept in the airport and were understandably surly - had firearms been allowed on the premises 35% of the passengers would have been eliminated. After waiting on line 45 min Excy waved his frequent flier card and we were whisked out of line, to the consternation of the Indian family behind us who I thought were going to set us on fire. All in all, quite the experience. Friendly skies indeed.

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    1. What a horror story! Heathrow has not been our problem lately. It's been the ATL that has caused the issues. But I suspect we have been lucky.

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