Airport!

AIRPORT!

Airports. You have probably been spending an awful lot of time in them lately what with volcanoes, strikes and various other inconveniences. Airports are most often NOT our favourite places. Personally I find them fascinating and not in that whimpy cod-philosophical way that Alain De Botton does but from that all too human - can’t help staring at the car crash of humanity perspective. My father has a saying – “The things you see when you haven’t got a gun” – which perfectly encapsulates how I feel when I spend any time at all in an airport and no doubt explains why you aren’t allowed to bring firearms in with you. There is something about airports that brings out the worst in people.

Like checking in. On my most recent visit to Rome’s Fiumicino airport, I found that the term “fast check-in” sadly remains an oxymoron in this country. Alitalia may have installed swathes of new self check-in machines but you will still inevitably have to join an agonisingly slow, soul destroying queue. I thought I’d be smart and just print off my boarding pass when I arrived at the airport, only to find that the 5 letter code from my online booking was not the 13 digit code Alitalia now wanted me to enter. Once you’ve survived check-in and security, which basically amounts to a strip search – belts, shoes and apparently buttons can set the machine off – you can find your departure lounge and relax. Or not. We arrived at our assigned gate to find that the plane was already boarding – for Nuremberg. I hear the trials there are very interesting but it’s not a place you’d want to go for any length of time. Finally an announcement came over the tannoy that our flight for Milan was leaving from another gate, in another part of the airport. NOW. There was a sudden surge of trolleys and designer suits from Terminal D to Terminal C via Terminals G & H. For those of you who are a little confused, may I remind you that Fiumicino basically has one terminal which used to be divided into 1, 2 & 3. Now it’s a scrabble board.

During the mini marathon to our new gate, I surveyed our competition for the best seats and free snacks. As it was Friday afternoon our flying companions fell into two categories: portly businessmen or alpha male media types who when not flitting between Rome & Milan for meetings were obviously guest starring in Grey’s Anatomy. At the gate two German women pushed to the front of the queue under the misguided belief that being blonde and giggling a lot allowed them to do so. As the member of ground crew checking the boarding passes was male & Italian, this ploy seemed to work. I say “boarding” but we were actually being herded onto one of those buses that contains precisely three seats and a jungle gym of inconvenient railings. Once the bus was packed to battery hen proportions we set off across the tarmac, the two German women still giggling all the way down to their dark roots.

And then we drove. And drove. And drove. All around the runways we went. We were driving so long that I began to think that either: (a)The driver was lost as the sat-nav wasn’t working and let’s face it all those planes look the same. (b) We were not only at the wrong gate, but the wrong airport and they were driving us now to Ciampino or (c) this WAS our flight as in the latest cost cutting drive Alitalia had replaced all its planes with buses. Eventually we did stop in front of a plane mid runway. The doors to the bus opened and there was the usual rugby scrum up the stairs as otherwise respectable people pushed to be the first ones on the plane and fill up the overhead lockers with their oversize hand (sic) luggage.

I found myself sitting next to a man with slicked back hair who was dressed entirely in black. I asked him if he was going to a Johnny Cash tribute concert but I think the joke got lost in translation. He was one of those travellers who within 30 seconds of sitting down has the lap-top out checking his emails, made 3 phone calls and sent 4 texts. Obviously the thought of being out of contact for a whole fifty minutes was completely terrifying for the man. The stress of it all was too much for him though as no sooner had he flipped the lap-top shut, stowed his tray table and fastened his seatbelt than he was asleep. Legs splayed open, dribbling on your shoulder kind of asleep. The problem with passengers like this though is that although they sleep right through the safety demonstration and the take off, they are wide awake and chatty once airborne.

This being a Friday and rush hour however, we wouldn’t be airborne for sometime. Held on the runway backed up behind delayed flights – a promised five minute wait turned into thirty-five. In that sealed airless environment, with belts fastened waiting for take off you can almost see the tension spread through the cabin like swine flu. It was exactly at this moment that the baby three rows behind me began to cry. The crying soon became screaming and the screaming desperate screeching. You could hear the poor mother trying to placate the child while the other passengers around her grimaced and groaned – everyone that is apart from the infant’s father who was fast asleep.

The delay on the runway turned out to be longer than the flight itself. Once in the air though, the baby stopped crying and all the take-off sleepers, including the baby’s father and Johnny Cash next to me, woke up. True to his type, the man in black began mumbling away – it was a full 10 minutes before I realised he was actually talking to me. One tiny can of coke and packet of crackers later (such luxury – you don’t get this flying low cost) we were breezing through another airport rushing towards the city connection zigzagging past morons who automatically come to a halt in front of automatic doors, standing there with their mouths opening and closing like goldfish, effectively blocking the exit for everyone with their enormous suitcases . “Get out of here!” growled the voice in my head, “get out of here while you still can.”