Airport Rant

Here's a blow-by-blow of my latest air travel torment at Denver International Airport, pictured above.


DENVER AIRPORT: BAD MAMMAL

Blogger on a plane--looks
just like me, too

How many blog entries have been written while sitting on an airport runway trapped inside a plane that is going NOWHERE. It is the ultimate rant topic--time to kill (or, time being murdered), external locus of control (powerlessness), anxiety (how long will my ride wait at my destination point), hunger, thirst, and unappeasable bladder pressure.

And, I have sort of gone commando by opening this laptop and typing away against explicit instruction to not use electronical devices. At least if they drag me off the plane I’ll be OFF THE PLANE. I was going to write a literary blog as soon as we got in the air and received permission to compute. I was going to use my time productively and for the betterment of humanity.

Instead, I have devolved into rant mode, acidic and snarky. My natural tendency to lead the opposition has been triggered. Why do we not revolt? Why do 100 paying customers sit here like calves stuck in the castrating chute or like passive droolers waiting to be instructed. (“Close mouth now.”) What we lack, I think, is leadership, for someone (not me, please) to stand up and speak out and ask the most fundamental question of human existence--”why can’t we at least go to the bathroom?!?” I can hear the ensuing chorus of yeahs, amens, and gotta-go-pees peppering the dry recycling air.

The de-icing process--I think we need to put a few of
these into Denver Airport's Christmas stocking

I’m stuck on a runway in Denver. I have now been on the plane for over two hours. Although it was well documented that snow was coming, (we started talking about it at our conference yesterday morning) the airport was apparently not ready to de-ice the number of planes it had scheduled to take off. Our plane has been number five in line for de-icing for nearly an hour. Meanwhile, the weather system we could have flown out of is socking us in like the lid on a Tupperware bowl.

We’re already on the red-eye flight back to Columbus, Ohio, where we still face a two-hour drive home to Vinton County. My eyes will be dead, not red, by then. And I am already exhausted from attending a three-day conference that crammed my head so full with ideas and issues that I’m at a loss right now to make sense of it all.  I hope this intervening ordeal does not drive out the previous few days of experience in the same way that a concussion blanks out the most recent events before the injury.

Battlestar Galactica pilot and various ships in the blowing up process. Were any humans still on board?

Now we see planes being removed from the runway and dragged back to the gates. The last plane that shambled by was completely dark, like all occupants had expired. United in death on United Airlines. It reminds me of a sci-fi episode in which a spaceship thought to be both empty and in enemy hands was blown up with nuclear bombs--and right before the explosion, something appeared in the window--was it a face? Was it a human face or an alien face? The bomber pilot was haunted for many episodes with the ghosts or non-ghosts of his actions. Anyway, that’s what my wandering thoughts bring up when the “dark plane” goes by. Do we know who is/was in there? Does TSA have a plan for this? “Passengers die of boredom and dry sinus passages while de-icers sit idle in the tarmac.” “Pilots depressurize rebellious passengers demanding to take off or get off.” “Shroud of ennui offs trapped passengers.” “Even carry on bags desiccated on ‘death flight’.” “Carry-on carrion: Angry passenger empties overhead bins killing all.” We are news at eleven just waiting to happen, man.


Oh, now an iphone user reports that we are under a winter weather advisory. Power to the people. I love that about cell phones and the internet.

Oh, now the pilot has announced that we have been on the plane too long and are going back to the terminal. We are exceeding the 3-hour limit for pickling passengers. But, didn’t they know an hour ago that we would? Who compensates me for my time? Will they give me a rebate? Will they give me a free ticket for another flight? Will they give me a gift certificate for the food court? 

A squirrel plans ahead for winter;
squirrels are good at being mammals

It’s just horrid. I am looking for someone to be really angry at and there’s just no one. The pilot is as much a victim as me. Right now I am leaning toward blaming the airport for not planning ahead for sufficient de-icing equipment. And I blame those who let us even leave the gate when they could have predicted that we would not reach takeoff. I do not blame any supernatural entity for making it snow. It’s our job as mammals to cope with extremes of weather. I just wish the airport had been a better mammal.