BearX220

You got to get back in the sky sometime. The question is whether you really want to.

8 OCT: HP882 A320 DEP SEA 1115A ARR PHX 153P

I take the two-hours-before-flight-time instructions seriously and pull into the Sea-Tac parking structure at 910am. Parking spaces less than 300 feet from the terminal have been roped off. I'm guessing we've lost about 2000 spaces -- roughly the number just added during a major, multi-million dollar garage expansion. Net effect: we're even. Your tax dollars at work.

You now have to pick your way through orange plastic netting-barriers to hike to the terminal elevators, standing alone amid empty asphalt.

Long, confused lines in the terminal. HP, ATA and Asiana each own 15 to 25 feet of adjacent counter space, and each is trying to check in active flights (Asiana a 747 to SEL), so the mobs snake all over. Sea-Tac red jackets flap around ineffectually trying to herd people, but you can really only tell what line to stand in by sizing up the people in it: dignified Asian families for SEL, blue jeans and baby carriers for HP.

Check-in takes 30 minutes. HP has two agents working the pax and another five shuffling around behind the desk watching.

I get upgraded to 3D on the first leg and waitlisted for the second. The agent warns me that there is no food on this flight.

The security line at the B concourse takes ten or fifteen minutes. The instructions passed down the line are half-hearted and unenforced; a uniformed woman ordered everyone in line to take off their jackets and place them on the conveyor belt, then disappeared. When only half the crowd complied, nothing happened to the other half.

I put my cell phone, tape recorder, change and keys in my briefcase, passed it through the scanner, and walked through the metal detector. Clean. As I emerge an elderly security man asks me in garbled, broken English to empty my pockets anyway. I pull out my wallet and comb and put them in the plastic tray.

"Open wallet?" he says.

I shrug. "Sure."

He flips it open and admires my credit cards, then hands it back wordlessly.

Now another elderly security guy in a blazer steps forward, wanting to open my Lands' End Lighthouse overnighter. Sure, again. He rifles through my toilet kit, finds my fingernail clipper, rotates out the dull one-inch file and says:

"I can break?"

I shrug again. He snaps the file off, replaces the clipper in my bag and zips everything up. Meanwhile my cell phone, cassette recorder and an electronic game in my briefcase have excited no interest whatsoever. Nor have my pens, keys, dental floss, belt buckle or the other potential weapons on my person.

Idiotic.

Two National Guardsmen and a couple of air marshals in blue nylon jackets that say "US MARSHAL" on the back are standing around watching all this.

The B concourse is eerily underpopulated. I go looking for food to take on board. The sole sandwich shop has stingily assembled, loosely made deli sandwiches for $5.99; they'll fall apart if turned sideways, so won't do. These bandits are also selling small plastic cups of dry Froot Loops for $1.59 -- $2.79 if you want some milk to go with. That's about a 600% markup over supermarket prices.

Banishing inflight food has sure brought out some nasty entrepreneurial instincts at the airport.

The store's card swiper is out of order anyway, so I can't buy anything. I can't face going back out of security, and the only other option in the concourse is a Pizza Hut express. I am hungry and I know I will be very hungry in four hours but the thought of eating greasy, cold, congealed Pizza Hut pizza on a plane is more than I can bear, so I buy nothing.

I think about using the CO PC in B concourse but decide there's not enough time to warrant it. A sign on the door says hours have been cut from 5:15a to 9:15p due to staff reductions.

We board HP882 at 1045a. There are no clearly identified air marshals or National Guardsmen in the gate area. We have to show IDs again as we get our tickets ripped, but the young polo-shirted woman on duty doesn't look old enough to drive, let alone guarantee the security of a jetliner. Anyone who's been through the Heathrow Long Look at the boarding gate would find this procedure difficult to take seriously.

I settle into 3D. Some other F pax whip out Ziploc bags from home and tuck into sandwiches.

My seatmate is an accented, dark-skinned young man with a sketchy beard, wearing adidas sportswear. He is reading some fringe political manifesto. I think thoughts I am ashamed of but cannot suppress altogether, which makes me feel even worse.

We push back on time and there is no special announcement from the flight desk, no warnings about undue movement around the cabin, no galley cart against the cockpit door and no rules against congregating at the forward lav. Astonishingly we are close to full. All 12 F seats are taken and Y looks about 90% spoken for.

Takeoff is uneventful.

We are offered drinks as we get to altitude, but booze and HP trail mix are all there is for lunch. The FA apologizes for the cheap plastic glass that holds my vodka and cranberry juice. He also seems disappointed that I only want two -- as if five or six drinks would make up for the food ban.

Surely someone, on some flight, soon is going to have too many drinks on an empty stomach and create a discipline issue. Sometimes trail mix isn't enough to sop up all that vodka.

Nothing happens for two more hours. At one point the FA in the forward galley heats up his own lunch. It smells pretty good. He has nothing to do but sit behind his curtain and eat it. It is quiet and still on the plane. There is not really much point in flying F under these conditions.

Landing is fine; we're about ten minutes late.

8 OCT: HP275 B737 DEP PHX 240P ARR IAH 718P

The hike from A11 to B27 at Sky Harbor is about the longest possible there. The airport is quiet; people seem to be treading gently.

Our plane is coming in from Cabo and pulls up about 20 minutes behind schedule. Not so long ago the prospect of getting on a plane just in from a cross-border destination would have raised no eyebrows. It does now.

I break down and pay $4.49 for a burned, salty Pizza Hut pepperoni pizza and gobble it in the gate area. It's awful, but I have hours to go.

No upgrade for me on this leg; I have 18F. It's always tougher for a CO Elite on HP when the metal is a 737; they have just 8 F seats. We board at 240p. This time the gate agent has no interest in cross-checking IDs.

The Y cabin is about 60% full. We push back about 15 minutes late but have an unusually fast taxi and climbout. Again, no announcements out of the ordinary; we re encouraged to get up and move about the cabin, but few do. The old 737 has no IFE. So with nothing to eat, watch or listen to, everyone just sits there. There is one drink service and the whole staff disappears. It gets dark.

We make up some time and land IAH on time. Terminal A is very quiet for only 730p.

I get to my hotel to learn that I've been booked into a Doubletree CLUB, which has no hot food -- only an Au Bon Pain knockoff with "Chef's Creations" sandwiches pre-made hours and hours ago. I have to go sit in a Bennigan's by myself and feign interest in "Monday Night Football."

Sometimes business travel is just no fun at all.

10 OCT: HP530 B737 DEP IAH 806P ARR PHX 847P

So I drop the Avis car at IAH around 615p and I'm the only guy riding the red-and-white bus back to the terminal complex. And when I get upstairs in Terminal A I'm the only customer at the whole America West desk, which has five agents waiting for someone to check in.

I score immediate upgrades on both legs back to Seattle. Check-in takes around thirty seconds; it comes with a warning that America West no longer has any food. Passing through security takes another two minutes. There are two National Guardsmen sitting there cradling their M-16s (what would they DO with a firearm that size in an airport concourse?) but they are paying more attention to the cute, cherubic Latino security women than to me. No interest this time in my fingernail clipper or anything else.

I reach the little Chili's beyond security, glad to have an hour for dinner after an exhausting workday. But there's a chain across the entry. Chili's closes at 630p now, and it's 633p. Finally they let me in if I promise to just drink, not try to order any food.

The bartender tells me the restaurant has let 35% of its staff go, including three cooks and the other bartender. Meeters and greeters can't use the restaurant as it's beyond security. The America West loads have been so light, apparently, that passengers alone can't support the place. And I can't go anyplace else in Terminal A because my ticket only lets me into this particular concourse. "We used to be able to tell people, if we were closing and planes were delayed, to go on over to Terminal B or Terminal C," says the bartender, Joseph. "But now, if you ain't eating here, you ain't eating!"

So I drink three big beers, watch the sun go down, and eye the plates of wings and eggrolls and such around the room that were ordered at 625p.

On my way to Gate A17 at 730p I discover that a little vest-pocket McDonald's is still open, mainly for airport workers, but you have to order what's already in the steam bins -- they won't cook anything fresh. So no grilled chicken sandwich is possible, and no French fries. The guy sells me a congealed, tepid double cheeseburger.

So we get on the plane and I have 1C, the designated hero's seat in case any maniacs storm the cockpit, but nobody does. For the first time in my memory there's an open F seat out of IAH and a deadheading Horizon pilot claims it just before pushback. I gobble my stupid cheeseburger, feeling guilty about stinking up the cabin.

We depart and arrive on time and nothing happens in between except the FA keeps trying to get people to drink a lot, which I already did on the ground.

10 OCT: HP70 A319 DEP PHX 935P ARR SEA 1218A

Sky Harbor is dead quiet at 900p, and most of the food concessions are already closed -- though the Fox Sports bar is doing a roaring business as the A's beat the Yankees. No food in there, though, just drinks and drinks and drinks. So I wander down to A30 where a little knot of people is waiting. We board on time at 910p and we're all settled by 920p. There are only three in F and perhaps 40 in Y.

We push back on time and take off on time and the FA tries to get us to drink more and pushes trail mix at us but eventually goes to the back galley with his two co-workers, leaving the front of the plane utterly unguarded from international terrorists, unless you count me. Fortunately nothing happens.

There's a headwind and then thunderstorm cells over Seattle and we're 15 minutes late to the gate. There is, of course, no food at Sea-Tac either.

It is now possible to spend hundreds or thousands of dollars for an air ticket, travel all day, and have to choose between terrible, overpriced junk food -- or starving. Sometimes you have no choice.

Besides all that the was trip tense and sad. The weird, Kafkaesque security rules, the obvious holes in the net, the light loads, the deserted airports, the eyes of the nervous airline people bracing for the next round of layoffs, the soldiers with huge guns, the acute sense of vulnerability...

... there is no such thing as leisure travel now in this country. You cannot fly carefree or with happy anticipation. There is a long shadow over us. I wish it would dissipate. I bet it won't.





[This message has been edited by BearX220 (edited 10-11-2001).]

onedog

Yeah, I know what you mean.

das

The securing of the concourses has made already lousy airport food even worse, except in some hub cities (PHX has always had terrible food) like ATL and EWR which seem to have all the concessions doing business as usual.

At SEA, there is decent but overpriced Chinese food in terminal B. It sure beats Pizza Hut.