Waiting at the gate is an exploit I remember from that Friends episode (“The One with Ross’s New Girlfriend”, 1995) when Rachel – peak Jennifer Aniston with flowers in hand – waits for Ross returning from China, only for him to emerge with a new missus. Much like the whimsical innocence of mid-’90s sitcoms, we’ll never see such things in an airport again.
Looking at pre-9/11 airports is as if being confronted with an alien entity – the lax rules, the laissez-faire atmosphere of the buildings, the … freedom of the places. I flew on about seven flights prior to September 11, and even as a teenager I recall the airport endeavour was a doddle, much like crucifixion in the Python cinematic universe. It explains the success of the hijackers, especially when you consider box cutters and small knives were permitted on certain aircraft at the time.
I don’t think anyone with a modicum of concern for their own or another’s safety is bothered about making the ‘sacrifices’ of conforming to post-9/11 air travel rules. No bottle of Volvic allowed from outside the airport? Diddums. It’s a small price to pay.
The awfulness stems from interaction with passengers who are thick as fuck, and these are voluminous. Airports appear to be a breeding ground for the bottom-rung IQ scale of the general public. I’m talking about fuckers who line up at the conveyor belt oblivious to the omniscient signs on display indicating the liquid prohibitions, clowns who try and smuggle Prosecco on board, the haughty lot who protest at taking their shoes off, the numpties who insist on walking through the metal detector with a pocket full of shrapnel.
They are the real pain in the arse.
Further reading:
https://www.farecompare.com/travel-advice/9-ways-security-has-changed-since-911/
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/jun/29/my-short-life-as-an-airport-security-guard
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/how-airport-security-has-changed-since-september-11
https://www.cheatsheet.com/culture/things-you-could-do-at-an-airport-before-9-11.html/
2021 and that’s the end for the Gulliver of the skies. Airbus – Boeing’s apparent nemesis – announced this month that their double-deck four-engine behemoth with its looney range of 8,500 nautical miles (with plush onboard bars), will no longer be made once its last deliveries are finished in 2021. Emirates were Airbus’ biggest customer, but once they cut their orders it was game over.
Back to Portugal again, but this time the heady delights of Porto instead of last year’s Algarve. Arriving in the middle of a heatwave, I sweat my tits off for the remainder of the trip; as milk was a bad choice for Ron Burgundy, so here was my predilection for trousers and sweatshirts. No matter, the situation was somewhat rectified (t-shirt donned) after a decidedly traumatising wait in a sauna of a taxi rank. It’s a lovely city replete with multi-layered sandwiches and aesthetically pleasing denizens eating the sandwiches. For the record, I didn’t eat any sandwiches. I did, however, source cheap mushroom pâté from a convenience store. Winning.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 