05: Airports

Flying is evil.

I hate it.

Consider this: after the waiting-for-cab trauma, check-in lines, baggage restrictions, delays and paying through the nose for anything that might be classed as an extra, the only part of the experience in the least bit interesting are the two times when you might die in a giant fireball.

Is that good? Does that make you want to rush out and buy a ticket somewhere?

The worst part is the airport.

Tampa is OK, as airports go. That isn’t saying much, since all airports are vast anti-rooms to Purgatory, but Tampa makes up for its passable acceptability with access roads evidently designed by a highly-strung, drug-crazed teenager, prone to ADD.

It’s impossible to drive there without a substantial degree of luck. Terrified, because you think you’re about to miss the only entrance, you will take an inviting but wrongly signed road which requires veering left across 4 lanes of similarly panicked traffic. You will then find yourself on the endless causeway to St Petersburg, which is long enough to run out of gas.

Despite glossy ads and colorful TV commercials playing borrowed hospital music to persuade you how friendly they are, airlines generally display all the caring of abattoir owners. Just one small interaction with the check-in clerk when anything awry occurs is enough to show that their reason for existence is to provide as little as possible.

No, you can’t take that as hand luggage.

No, you won’t get a meal.

No, you won’t get a seat assignment because we oversold the flight and will shortly be bouncing people from it so you have until the end of time to see if we will let you on.

No, you cannot occupy an exit row because you’re too short, too wide, too old or too stupid to follow meaningless instructions and open the door when the plane goes down in the ocean.

If they could clip your ears and ship you off in a cardboard box, they would.

I have arrived to find that my seat assignment, made online weeks earlier, was no more than a request. The seat has always been unavailable and I should have called ahead to beg for something better. Since I did not, I must now stare at the bulkhead for seven hours, squeezed into the center row between two over-sized people whose middles meet in my lap.

Alternatively, I could voluntarily decline that privilege and wait until midnight to go standby on a succession of connecting flights that will get me to my destination in three days. My luggage is not expected to join me for the foreseeable future. Have a nice day.

Let’s not forget security. The TSA is the general name for otherwise unemployable down-and-outs of America, who are squeezed into dark blue trousers several times too small, given an inappropriate degree of authority and allowed to loiter by the metal detectors.

Shouting about last night’s game and grinning inanely into the air, their one skill is to detect the presence of hair shampoo or nail clippers in your carry-on bag. This is presumably via telepathy, since their eyes rarely focus on the garish pictures of your underwear sliding by, unnoticed by anyone except fellow passengers.

Either of these highly dangerous items might be used to take over the plane should you develop unexpectedly resourceful terrorist tendencies mid-flight. I have accidentally taken knives, scissors and the like, but Head and Shoulders gets me every time.

Like shit slithering downhill, this attitude of customer-is-there-to-be-taunted continues with the commercial operations.

A small coffee and sandwich in an airport Starbucks – served by a head-scarved Middle-Eastern girl who speaks no English – will cost the entire contents of your wallet. Forget about a meal in a restaurant with real plates and silverware, unless you’re prepared to accept a lien on your house.

At check-in, they impress upon you how important it is to be at the gate 30 minutes before take off, usually in a tone suggesting that any tardiness will see you tied to the undercarriage and dragged down the runway.

Mindful of the time, you decline the last drink, the last coffee or properly browsing magazines and go directly there, but then they keep you waiting and waiting and waiting. Just when you can feel your eyelids crumbling to dust, they reveal that there is no aircraft.

“It had technical problems in Philadelphia,” the PA admits in a whispered crackle. Perhaps if the announcer held the phone to her head instead of upside down at arm’s length like a Star Trek communicator, her voice might rise to the level of discernable. If you’re lucky, people close to the desk will relay the message.

Technical problems? What does that mean? The toilet won’t flush - or the engine might fall off? I want to know exactly what’s wrong with it, not a vagary, then I can decide how much I want to worry.

On a scale of one to ten, a non flushing toilet causes very little aggravation; about a three, I would say. Not so the other, which I’d be tempted to call a full ten, unless it occurred when stationary, on the ground and devoid of passengers and crew, in which case it gets downgraded to an eight.

If they actually give an anticipated time, measurable by standard clocks and you foolishly accept this and go in search of refreshment, the plane will arrive moments later and immediately take off again, without you.

Anyway, don’t think me negative. I just wanted to share my opinion of airports before tomorrow’s flight to Los Angeles just in case, on the oddest of odd chances, the occasion is better than a foretaste of hell.