Air Travel

I spent time on four airplanes within the last week or so.  I took a flight from Detroit to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Dublin.  On the way home I took a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam, then from Amsterdam to Detroit.  What a joke.

Security in the 9/11 world is nothing short of stupid.  The little old lady in her Depends has to get a thorough shakedown because it would be racist for us to acknowledge that young Middle Eastern men are more likely than anyone else to be terrorists.  The next bluehair from St. Clair Shores to hijack a plane will be the first, right?  So why are we so stupid as to pretend that everyone passing through security at the airport is an equal threat?

My flight got to Amsterdam a little early and the scheduled layover was already a few hours long, so I had some time to kill while I was there.  That airport is a backward reminder of 1978, incidentally.  I had always been under the impression that those Europeans were advanced and groovy and whatnot.  That airport isn't worth a shit.  Maybe they're socially superior because they have a lot of hookers and blow over there, but they need to start upgrading their facilities to bring them into the 1990's.  I can tell you that much.

After sitting at the gate for a few hours, I decided to walk over and check the screen to see if my flight would be leaving on time.  I had a 9:30am scheduled departure for Dublin.  The screen said 10:40am to London.  What the hell is that all about?  After asking a few people, I was told that my flight had been moved to a different gate... at the opposite end of the airport.  Cocksuckers.

As my brother and I started hiking it across town, someone made an announcement saying that the flight had been moved.  So the 200 people waiting for the plane started following in hot pursuit.  Remember the old days when each gate at the airport had a separate security checkpoint, instead of having one main checkpoint with everything inside already secured?  Yeah, so do the Dutch.  They remember it because for them the old days are right now.  Knowing that we would have to pass through security again, and knowing that there was a throng hot on our heels, my brother and I kicked it into high gear and beat everyone to the new gate.

We came down an escalator and found that the next security checkpoint was already a clusterfuck.  At least we got our feet onto solid ground though.  After another thirty or forty people came down the escalator behind us, the security area was full.  Nowhere to go.  People were on the escalator, getting thrown down on top of people standing at the base of the escalator.  Those people at the base of the escalator were getting shoved forward into those of us standing on the ground.  Brilliant.

(This whole episode was apparently the result of a bomb scare.  They cleared out half the damned airport instead of realizing that the fucking bomb had been there for 70 years and probably wasn't going to hurt anyone.)

After a few minutes someone had enough sense to hit the emergency stop on the escalator and prevent anyone from getting crushed to death.  The security people had no sense at all.  They stopped the security line dead in its tracks, telling us that there were too many people in the wing of the airport to which we were going.  So the crowds of people trying to get to their new gate were lining up all the way back down the hallway from which they came.

After about fifteen minutes of standing around and wondering when these jagoffs would get their act together, we were finally allowed to pass through security - again.  Then we walked down to the far end of the terminal and found that there were no airplanes.  We were getting onto a bus instead.  Bus ride from Amsterdam to Dublin?  Not quite, but it seemed just as stupid.  The bus held somewhere around 30-40 people.  There were 200 of us who needed to get to the plane.  Yeah, that took a while.  They drove us out to a tarmac in the middle of nowhere, at which point we walked up the steps to our plane - Air Force One style.

The flight from Amsterdam to Dublin was on Aer Lingus.  It was a quick flight and I enjoyed the old-school outfits that the stewardesses were wearing, but it was annoying that they were charging money for a can of soda.  For fuck's sake man.  Is it really that tough out there?

On the way out of Dublin, the line for the check in and bag drop was enormous.  There were five agents working the counter.  After we were in line for ten minutes, three of the five agents left.  Just packed up their shit and left.  That didn't exactly make for an efficient check in process.  Then the same crowd of people had to line up and wait to get through security.  Good times, good times.

We got back to that dump in Amsterdam without any further incident.  The layover this time was quite a bit shorter, so we headed straight to the gate and boarded the plane.  It left twenty minutes late, for no apparent reason.

When we got to Detroit, more nonsense ensued.  We had been given some sort of customs document while on the plane.  Who are you, where did you go, where do you live?  That sort of stuff.  With the completed document in hand, we had to wait in another gigantic line before we could talk to some high school dropout who now works for the federal government.  Once again, why do we play this game?  I'm a United States citizen, born in this country and living in this country.  I don't need to be handled the same way as someone from Tehran.  This is not complicated.  If you think I'm smuggling shit, then x-ray my luggage.  (Actually I hope they already do this.  I don't know.)

So that was stupid.  Then, once we got through that checkpoint, we picked up our checked bags.  Time to leave, right?  Nope.  Another fucking customs checkpoint was right outside the baggage claim.  We had to stand in line again, then answer the same set of questions... again.  Stupid.  For people with connecting flights it was even worse.  They have to do everything I just described - customs, baggage, customs again.  Then they have to go back through check in and bag drop, back through security, and back into the terminal to catch their next flight.  Idiotic, seriously.

The summary of this post is as follows - air travel is bullshit.