On Your Radar

Endless Fun with Airports and Air Travel December 20, 2009

According to some advertisements on TV spending Christmas with your family is priceless. Well, that may be so, but the price you have to pay for flying around this time of year certainly comes with a cost. It’s just not one that is measured in money.

I got to the airport all right. I arrived early because I did not want to take the risk of the trains being messed up due to the snow. I had checked the website of the airport in the morning and though behind my flight it just said “scheduled” there did seem to be an hour delay in general on a number of flights.

After I had lunch at the airport I went to see if I could find out where to check in. That’s when I find out my flight had a 2 hour delay. I thought to myself, as long as I’ll get there I’ll be happy so lets try to kill some more time.

Killing time at the airport consists of a limited number of things:

There’s reading, which I had already done during lunch.

There’s eating and drinking, the former of which I had already done and the latter of which I did not feel in the mood for after Tuesday’s Office Christmas Party.

There’s shopping, which I decided to do. I ogled shoes at Clarks without any intention of buying. Next I went into a little book, CD and DVD store. The selection of DVD’s was a ranged from crappy b-films to a few “cherry picked” a-films and a whole bunch of Mae West films which I nearly ended up buying.

And then there’s playing with your laptop. I was about to put in a disc of Roswell (I’m re-watching everything in a phase of teenage nostalgia), when my flight had disappeared from the check-in board. In a panic I got my stuff together and walked to another one where I discovered I was finally allowed to check-in.

This meant I was due to stand in my first line out of an estimate of four or five for this journey. Luckily I chose the line with the best entertainment: there were two scales where people could weigh their suitcases to see if they’re within the limit, at a mere cost of 50p per suitcase (No change given, you can weigh two for a pound but you have to place the second one on within 10 seconds!). The winner was 30.2kg, that’s definitely not within the limit I think.

After I had conquered my first queue I got to go straight into the next one in order to proceed to the lounge. Yet another 30 minutes of shuffling along. This time the entertainment came in the form of a guy who was very much in a hurry. First he tried to just blatantly walk passed everyone but apparently someone had sent him back because he came and stood right behind me. When the queue turned round a corner he thought he had sneakily got in front of me. In reality I had noticed how much in a hurry he was jumping from one foot to the other and sighing heavily, and I had let him pass me. One more guy in front of me would not make my plane leave sooner anyway.

In the next 20 minutes I got to watch him sneak his way in front of 5 more people only to pass everyone in the end anyway because he was in such a hurry. He did all this however without saying one word. Not once did he say “excuse me” or anything else to explain why he was passing people by. And he wasn’t the only one who did this. There was another guy who did the exact same thing without saying one word. I should try this next time I don’t feel like queuing.

Finally I had made it into the lounge. I browsed some more shops though most of them were horribly overprized or just full of expensive items. I’m not sure how this works. The shops you find at airport lounges are always a mix of some normal shops that sell things everyone needs like toiletries, books, magazines food and snacks etc. And then the rest of the shops are all with designer clothes or shoes and expensive jewelry and perfumes. Now I might be mistaken but I think the majority of travelers at the airport aren’t really loaded with money. Unless the idea is that you fly with a low cost airline and spend the rest of your money buying luxurious items at the airport.

After I had eaten something more as a number of hours had passed since lunch, I found out my flight had yet another 55 minutes delay. And after playing with my laptop it became yet another 55 minutes. My one hour flight now had nearly four hours delay.

Finally we got called to go to the gate, where of course there was another wait for us in store, but luckily this airport has lots of chairs near the gate. After finding out I was not going to get my money back, because my airline thinks the whole four hours delay was due to mother nature, I sat myself down. Unlike the majority of the other people who thought that standing in a herd near the gate was going to make the wait shorter and easier. I only stood up once we were already boarding and there was a handful of people left waiting to board.

We did leave in the end. And I made it to my destination. Sorry for the long post. If you have made it all the way to the end chances are you sort of feel like I did when I finally arrived. Thank you for reading.