Monday, November 20, 2006
U.S. AIRPORT…A MODERN POLICE STATE
Not being a frequent flier, perhaps my perspective differs slightly from that of those who have already been conditioned. In any case, just recently I had an occasion to fly from California to Cleveland via Houston—an itinerary that scrambles the concept of time and fuel conservation to begin with, but we'll leave that alone for now.
First a little background. In the 1950s the airport was the destination of the Sunday afternoon drive. We watched the planes come and go from the vantage point of the other side of the airport fence where there was ample front-row parking for free.
Next came the observation deck. Sunday at the airport, sitting on the observation deck park benches watching the planes come and go beneath us must have been considered by the airlines to be a better advertisement for the benefits of flight than other outlets could provide. In any case, at Cleveland Hopkins they not only maintained the deck and benches, but also let us spend time there in sufficient numbers to assure that getting a place at the show was almost considered an American right. We just took it for granted that we were welcome visitors. It was usually an SRO crowd.
Then came the hijackings of the late 60s and 70s, and the end of the observation deck was part of the airport remodeling; but we could still watch from the circular viewing platform at the end of the concourse inside the airport, behind windows that are now nothing but a memory. It was from that platform that I concluded, by watching the landing strip, that if all these planes were flying around and I wasn’t hearing about crashes, flying must be a safe thing to do.
For travelers, a goodbye kiss at the gate used to be a rite of passage into vacationland, and the welcome back at the gate was a guarantee for anyone with loved ones at home. We watched from the windows as our relatives boarded their flight by walking up the metal staircase, and waved to them as soon as we found the window where they were seated on the plane. And they waved back. This silent communication continued until their flight began to taxi to the runway, and wasn’t completely concluded until we could no longer see their plane up in the clouds, at which point we went home talking about the fact that their plane would land at about the same time that we would be pulling into our driveway; and we marveled at the miracle of flight.
Sitting on one of the chairs in the main terminal and watching the coming and going of those privileged to fly was another way of vicarious participation in the action. As a teenager, I longed to join them.
Those are the standards I take to be normal, and the scale by which I measure the current experience. Life in the airport today is another adventure altogether, a visit to a modern police state.
My ride out to California had been uneventful, with a layover that permitted a leisurely meal in the airport pub. I expected something similar coming back, but it was not to be. My day on the plane started with the 5:15 a.m. alarm and a hasty scramble to get everything in the suitcase on time. Breakfast was a couple of bites of a stale croissant that happened to be hanging around the hotel room from a previous excursion to the grocery store. By 6:15 I was in the shuttle that dropped me off outside the terminal at the airline check-in. I got the bags checked and wheeled the carryon into the airport to get ready to wait for the flight in one of the places where breakfast would be available.
I got through security easily, but my carryon didn’t. There was a problem with the contents. Something that I was afraid would break was packed in the bag I would be handling carefully myself—specifically Mexican tequila that I had thought would be accepted in the carryon after talking with an airline employee about restrictions on bringing liquor home. Apparently I had misunderstood. The airline didn’t want it in the passenger compartment. It would have to be checked.
It had to be paid for separately since only two bags could be checked and I had already checked two bags. Checking my contraband took up the time I would have spent getting breakfast.
Since my carryon contained overnight gear for a possible glitch in the return flight, the possibility of a night on the road without even a hairbrush let alone a change of clothes was dancing through my thoughts as I once again went through security. This time my shoes which were deemed worthy on the first pass didn’t clear the inspectors and were singled out for special treatment.
It was about then that I remembered that my camera with hundreds of souvenir pictures on the discs in the camera case was still in the carryon, now-checked, suitcase and may not survive whatever it was that they did to checked baggage behind closed doors.
When the inspectors were satisfied that those really were Dr. Scholl inserts in my shoes, I was admitted to the interior sanctuary with just enough time to buy a bottle of water and get on the plane. I got to sit on that plane for an hour or more while the six flights ahead of us traveled the runway—time that surely could have been used to eat breakfast in the airport if I could have boarded an hour later when the plane was actually going to take off.
But all was not lost. This was to be a “breakfast flight.” I had a momentary vision of bacon and eggs before the flight attendant started passing out those boxes of Cheerios. She forgot to give me any milk, but then remembered her error and came back with a small carton of it. The sweetener I would have put on the cereal had I been at home never did appear. The banana that went with it was too ripe to be appealing and too welcome to reject given that I had no idea when the next meal would be coming after that wait for the runway. By this time I was already late for my connecting flight unless the pilot had one heck of a leadfoot.
As we neared Texas, the flight attendant started talking about ordering a cart to get those of us who had to make a tight connection from arrival gate to departure gate in time for the next flight. Then plans changed again.
Now we were diverted to San Antonio because there were high winds in Houston and the airport had been shut down. We were too low on fuel to circle in the holding pattern until we could land. We would refuel while waiting.
The pilot didn’t warn us that there were also high winds in San Antonio. I guess he had his hands full with the controls. The landing was memorable. In fact it was so quiet in the plane while we were landing that had the engines been shut off, you could have heard a pin drop. Now I know what they mean by white-knuckle ride, and I know what it feels like to prepare for death while squashed between two total strangers. I could have happily lived my entire life without this knowledge
When we landed, we were not able to taxi to a gate and get out of the plane to wait. Too many planes were there before us and the gates were all taken. We had to wait it out on the runway until Houston was plane-worthy once again—something like ninety minutes later. By now it was nearly four p.m. in Houston, and the Cheerios were long since digested. Fortunately I had a bottle of water because the passengers were not offered anything to drink until moments before we had to buckle up for take-off. We still had to fly to Houston, and then God only knew where I was going from there.
By now the flight attendants were looking somewhat bedraggled. They kept offering to get anyone off the plane who did not wish to travel on to Houston, being very definitive in their explanation that the airline would provide no help to anyone deciding to do so. Apparently if we were unwilling to stay on the plane, Continental wanted nothing more to do with us.
I considered whether the attendants were trying to tell us it would be wise to get off now while we had the chance given the number of times they offered. The last time sounded a little too much like the airline assuring itself of having no legal liability should the plane crash. They could claim that we had been offered an alternative and had all rejected it, so being dead was our own fault. Any number of notions can pass through the head of an airline passenger who has been scared to within an inch of her life and then forced to sit for an indeterminate time with nothing to do and no option to move to a more comfortable position.
The flight to Houston turned out to be anti-climactic. Once on the ground there was a mad scramble for the connecting flight to Cleveland which seemed also to have been delayed or at any rate was partially empty, and I was among those who got on board. We bumped and swayed our way north and bounced hard on the landing, but were finally home around 9 p.m. I rejected the urge to get down on my knees and kiss the ground, realizing that it would not be God’s good earth I would be kissing, but only more of the property of the airlines.
Alas the luggage did not arrive with us. While waiting in line to fill out the lost luggage report, I calculated the time it had taken to make the five hour flight from California to Cleveland. Twelve hours. Too many of them spent on the ground in the middle seat of the modern moving sardine can. I did get some satisfaction from fantacising taking off that shoe they thought was a weapon and turning it into one I could hurl at the smiling face on the drop-down screen in the plane—the face of the Continental corporate President who thinks flying on his airline is “great”, and doesn’t seem to realize that we are treated like criminals when trying to board, that we are stuffed into padded straight-jackets, that sometimes we are imprisoned on the tarmac without access to food and water, and that the threat of a terrorist blowing us even further off of the face of the earth than we were already flying is a constant companion.
On the flight out to California—a “snack flight”—I had been served a small sandwich with some carrots and M&Ms for dessert. On the return flight to Cleveland we were told that the flight attendants would be serving “dinner” since this was a “dinner flight”. I thought about the “dinner” I had eaten on my way to Jamaica on my honeymoon, back in the days when one had enough arm room to actually eat a dinner. This time it seems that the “snack” had mysteriously become a “dinner” with the help of the clock. Nothing had been added to the food list. Obviously at “dinner” time you can’t serve a “snack”, but you can rename the “snack” a “dinner” and everyone will be fooled. Well, not quite.
In each airport throughout this miserable day I listened to the public announcements that luggage must not be left unattended, that I should not accept anything from a stranger, and that unattended bags were to be considered suspicious and airport personnel notified. I read the signs informing us that we had been upgraded to an orange alert. I watched a woman struggle mightily with her carryon bag, trying to get it into an airport toilet stall, finally giving up, and leaving her carryon unattended while she saw to the demands of nature. And I read those signs telling passengers not to even think about making a joke of the check-in process. God forbid anyone should find something funny in all of this.
When my luggage arrived the next day, and after verifying that at least some of the pictures came through and the camera still appeared to be working, I started unpacking and found the Transportation Security Administration “Notice of Baggage Inspection” in both of the suitcases that I had checked initially. Apparently they had not bothered to open up the piece I had checked separately, but that liquor must have triggered the search of the rest of my luggage, as well as my shoes. So much for privacy, and so much for random searches. This housewife from Ohio had apparently been branded suspect, and no piece of dirty clothing was to be left unturned in finding the evidence.
Actually, in retrospect, I have to agree with the airline luggage policy. Who knows what a bored, scared, hungry, cramped and cranky old lady from Ohio who doesn’t fly much might do with a bottle of tequila in her hand and her eye on the emergency exit door equipped with a slide. After the first few sips I might even have passed the bottle and recruited accomplices.
There is a postscript to this little airplane saga. The stack of backed up mail at home included the latest “New Oxford Review” in which there appears an editorial entitled “The So-Called War on Terror.” In it, I found the reason my shoes and luggage were searched:
There would be no need for any U.S. “war on terror” if the U.S. had an evenhanded policy in the Middle East. Before 9/11, Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda had grievances against Israel for its presence in Jerusalem and its treatment of Palestinians.”
It seems that the folks at NOR believe America has formed an alliance with Israel that is unjust to the Arab states; and that had we remained neutral in the mid-East squabble, we would not now be having our luggage searched and kissing our loved ones a hasty goodbye at the terminal curb. As the NOR article points out, there is no terrorism in Sweden.
According to the editors:
All the U.S. would have to do is have a fair-minded policy in the Mid-East. Why is that so hard to do?
One answer, given by two academics of the realist conservative school of foreign policy, John Mersheimer and Stephen Walt, is that the Israel Lobby—particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)—has a stranglehold on U.S. policy in the Mid-East….Of course, Mersheimer and Walt were smeared as “anti-Semites.” But they’re said to be Jewish; however, we can’t confirm that. Over the past thirty years, Israel has taken 33 percent of U.S. foreign aid.
So apparently the reason my shoes and luggage were searched is that my tax dollars have been at work. Does this mean that if I stop paying my income tax, my luggage won’t be searched next time I fly? Well, it’s an amusing thought anyway.
As I said I don’t fly much. I’m not planning to repeat this nightmare any time soon. Incidentally, in case you’re wondering, the tequila made it home in better shape than I did.
Fly the friendly skies. Just offer it up for time off Purgatory.
