Daily Post – challenge : You’re at the airport, your flight is delayed for six more hours, and none of your electronic devices are working. How do you pass the time?
Reading. Of course. Actually did this once – travelling to Hawaii from Singapore, in 1998. Travel agents gave me three options: 1) Singapore to Denpasar then Honolulu on Garuda Air. Which was the cheapest but with hindsight I am glad this was rejected as serious racial tension escalated and Garuda flights were disrupted. 2) Singapore to Vancouver, then Honolulu: too far, too many time zones, too much travel time. And 3) Singapore to Tokyo, six hours to connect to a different airline and then onto Honolulu. Nowadays anyone going to the Ironman World Championships might have less hassle getting direct flights.
So I had an interesting book with me, found a comfortable couch type of seat on a staircase with a window outside to watch the changing light and bunkered down. But even if you are not so not so equipped, most airports have bookshops, and there is usually the 3 for $50 deal. Oh you don’t have any money, then what?
I did break that waiting period up with walks around the terminal, plus talking to my 15 year old daughter. She wouldn’t have sat still for six hours. But there was only so much you could see and do in Narita terminal 
back then. We were rather disappointed by the minimal souvenir stands compared with huge expanses inside Singapore terminals, plus a range of in-transit activities. And once you have seen crowds of slightly flustered, or chain smoking Japanese travellers they cease to be interesting.
What other than reading what are the other options?
Anyway my experience was at a time pre electronic media as entertainment. What did we do back then? You went to a bar, talked to strangers. Six hours that’s probably enough time to get drunk, have sex in a public toilet and then go your own way. But primed for the biggest one day endurance event on the planet I wouldn’t have taken that option, even without my teenage daughter.
People watch, find a corner and construct stories about those who pass by, where are they travelling, where from and towards what… hey I have done that. (Story follows) Can you background a major airport incident? Oh there haven’t been many of those!
If people watching doesn’t do it for you, and you have no cash to buy a book, how about borrowing other people’s ideas. Open a random novel, find a passage and let rip…
From Michael Palin’s Diaries …Last night Gillian rang to tell me that my impending appointment at Shepparton is causing quite a stir….
What you don’t have pen – feeble excuse, won’t someone in the terminal lend you one? Now you are complaining about paper. I read recently that Hemingway used toilet paper for a love poem once.
Look if you don’t have a book, cash, no functioning electronic devices, nor pen and paper, you might have to be spending the next six hours just wandering the terminal corridors. That could (depending on where you are) take all of 10 minutes.
Sleeping might be an option. Except for the way many departure lounges are set up to eradicate this option. Besides what if you sleep right through your delayed flight.
What about people who have spent days, months, years even in a terminal. Scary thought: But if you had to you could find something to do.
Add up the flight numbers and see how long it takes you to reach a figure; a million maybe. Careful don’t lose track.
Here follows my story – feel free to make constructive comments.
Airport Happening
Light years ago as a teenager, naïve and unprepared, I left these same types of premises. Elated at leaving home; excited about an aircraft journey interstate (my first); fantasizing about a Sydney I was supposedly too young to visit. Anxiety now seems cataclysmic compared with those adolescent emotions. I am amazed at the effect of supposedly adult relationships in causing my present turmoil.
Remorse, euphoria, intimidation are now mixed together in the chemical container that is supposed to by my body. Strains of that song – L.A. International Airport echo in my head, like a voice-over in some daytime soap opera. (Even though I aren’t in Los Angeles) “Hippie in a leather shirt….” I wonder if contemporary teenagers would even know what a hippie is. And anyway, what would one being doing in an airport? Rather they would be at home amongst the vegetable garden, recreational drugs and lifestyle synonymous with Nimbin, Margaret River in Australia or maybe even Berkeley. Even that location must be getting a bit dated now. But I heard that hippies still are recognizable on Haight-Ashbury. I am quite sure that Big Sur area would still be their home base.
“Hostess in a mini skirt…” They don’t even wear miniskirts anymore, and its flight attendants now. So much has changed.
Then there is the line about, “see my suitcases go quickly by…” in this age of conveyor belts to loading docks and tunnels to planes; invisible workings, passenger aesthetics, all that luggage movement happens well away from the human cargo. Far from my eyes, suitcases are loaded, thrown about, x-rayed, and subjected to sniffer dogs and various other indiscretions. Who knows what they are doing with my treasured bags?
My possessions were taken from me at check-in. I would have to believe; to have faith in the system that although not seen they will accompany me and that my bags would arrive. These thoughts compete with others which nag.
I feel as if I am leaving behind something that will not be recovered; something forever lost; like the words of the song in my head; lamenting a lover who will never be seen again. This time my airport anticipation is only a prelude to a holiday. Not a “champagne flight to rid myself of every care I’d owned…” sounds like a trip to an illegal abortion. There is nothing such as fearful in my world, nothing left behind, no lovers departure; no teary passionate farewells.
Why was I experiencing that sinking feeling that something important, even essential has been forgotten? Mine had been a managed departure, without rush or panic, there was no need to worry. The check list, double confirmation; ticket, credit card, house keys – yes everything was here. Why was I so worried? Was it such a risk to take to the sky in an airborne ‘bird-bus’? Contemporary engineering would assure it’s going to be fine. Or are the stomach churns in anticipation of time zone infringements? I clamber for a justification to explain my intensity. Resting finally on the slim comfort – others must be experiencing the same feelings.
Fellow travellers are loaded with gifts; they are going home to loved ones. Or bearing files, official paper work or various professional trimmings, I fit neither group. My reverse direction, and holiday mode seems strangely alien. I feel like a bird who flying north for summer. To occupy my thoughts a game of constructing personalities, lifestyles and the reasons for their travel is played. There goes an accountant absconding with several firm’s funds. That lady is fleeing to the arms of someone she only just met on the internet. He is finally going home, about to get the news that his mother’s cancer is no longer in remission.
Paperbacks are taken from the news-agency stand and explored, considered as possible entertainment for the journey’s duration, by those milling about in the terminal. Once on board the plane travellers will turn back the cover, open a book at page one, like some new component to life, begun with this journey. I too possess a travel paperback; the story of an entity which controls a woman. Yet the pages of this book have already been turned, mine was started last night, as if I cling to links between portions of existence. Instead of departure as an ending, severing all ties, my book connects the pieces. I did not want changes to be so final, or to turn a brand new book cover thus making an obvious new beginning.
I arrived at the airport well within the appointed schedule, now there was only the waiting. Airport protocol; a procedure of checking tickets, seat allocation, sitting in departure lounges it all seems like forms of herding. People are wasting time by perusal of airport shops, where things are so expensive. Simple, basic things like bottled water are marked at prices that seem extortion.
Departure announcements are part of the whole rigmarole. I remember urgent calls for a passenger, nameless now over the years. Would they report to a specific lounge! An insistent intercom voice repeated and repeated. Phone calls to a ticketing counter; yes, that last remaining passenger had checked-in. They were in the terminal somewhere. Probably in the bar with their ears protected from all those demanding announcements by a blanket of voices plus a muffling desire for cigarettes or alcohol. Of course the bar would not be an alcohol fuelled sanctuary at this hour of the morning.
One woman sat curled into a departure lounge seat, sleeping silently; was that who was being called? Airport staff nudged the hibernating form – no need to frighten her needlessly. Yes, it was her; all those calls had been unable to penetrate her sleep. She flung herself towards the departure gate, disappeared without obvious embarrassment into the plane’s embrace.
How I wished my own departure could be so. Asleep through all the required steps; all this meaningless time wasting, bustling strangers, perusal of books, imaginings and questionings, comings and goings; to be awakened by concerned staff, who are motivated by a desire to tick off that last name from their list. I would then be bustled onto a full plane, everyone waiting for me; then without further delay whisked off to another place and time. Limited thinking or deliberation required.
Finally the boarding announcement breaks into thoughts. “This is a boarding call for United Flight 93. Please move towards gate 12.”
karenlethlean2014 