In Airports
By Jean-Luc Currie
March 2023
15 Minute Read
Volume 2. Issue 3.
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The curved stone pillars of Dulles will always remind me of when I left for graduate school right after college. I was unsure of myself, and although I wouldn’t admit it, I was scared too, moving the little that existed of my whole life. Which was five massive checked bags. I had no place to stay, just a hotel room for two nights and a guide book that described different boroughs in London. When I disembarked at Heathrow wearing khaki pants, hiking boots, and blue polo, I looked ridiculous lugging those five large bags through customs, trying to explain to the Customs Agent that "No, I don’t have a visa." "Yes, I’m a student." "Yes, I’m also a Marine Corps Officer." "No, I don’t have an address"—thanks for reminding me that I still don’t have a place to live. I didn’t know British Customs Agents took their role so seriously. You’d think I was Osama bin Laden, not an American military officer. Cheers to you, Europeans, this is everything you have to look forward to post-Brexit.
One hundred years ago the airport as we know it today was barely imaginable. Now, however, it’s commonplace for us to drive to an airport hub, walk past designer stores through a terminal packed with thousands of other people, stand in line for twenty minutes waiting for a bad cup of coffee, sprint to the gate because we stood in line for a bad cup of coffee, cram ourselves into the seats with other passengers, and then grumble once we land, waiting for the passengers to unzip themselves from the seats and file up the jetway to a new terminal filled with thousands more people waiting in line for bad cups of coffee.
London's Heathrow airport handles over 19 million passengers per year, or, as their website proudly states, that’s 128,178 passengers per day. That’s a long cry from the Charles Yeager Airport in Charleston, West Virginia, where I lived from 2018 to 2021. Yeager Airport serves 800 passengers per day, or 292,000 passengers per year: 1.5% of the total traffic Heathrow sees annually. I used to fly in and out of the Chuck Yeager Airport (named after West Virginia’s most famous aviator and the first pilot to break the speed of sound) quite often. I could check in, go through security, and be sitting at my gate, which happens to be one of only four gates, within 5 minutes. One other person in the security line was a busy day. But it’s the baggage claim area that always made me chuckle.
Somehow, Atlanta’s Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, which serves a whopping 93.7 million passengers per year, and has 192 different gates, can get my luggage from plane to baggage claim within 20 minutes, but Yeager struggled to make it in twice that time. So I often waited for over half an hour listening to “Country Roads” by John Denver on repeat and watching a looped promotional video on an assemblage of TV screens showcasing “Wild, Wonderful, West Virginia.”
Airports make us inadvertent eavesdroppers, giving us brief glimpses into the lives of the people around us. It’s like glancing in a window while gliding by on a bicycle. It’s quick but forms a definite impression. In one such glimpse I listen to a conversation between a traveling nurse and a newly minted divorcée. The divorcée is on her way to Chicago. It’s been a hard seven months, she confesses to the nurse, after her husband of 27 years decided marriage was no longer to his taste. “I cry at every meal,” she says, “and I can only get halfway through.”
“It’s a great diet plan,” she adds.
She’s hurting but trying to make the best of a bad situation. “I have faith in the universe,” she points out suddenly. “Everything will work out.” She talks about her kids—a young man who graduated with a mechanical engineering degree and a daughter who studied in Switzerland—and how different they are from one another. How strait-laced the young man is—“He doesn’t smoke or drink and he’s never dated”—and how much more wild the young woman acts—“She kept checking the location on her international flight so she could drink at 18.” Her daughter, she says, “is much more like me.” She goes on to explain that she rescued a cat. “He saved my life,” she offers in a typical cliché. “He keeps me sane.”
The young nurse is empathetic and kind, listening patiently as the middle-aged divorcée unloads a host of troubles, stranger therapy in an airport clearly her preferred way to decompress. I can’t help wonder what caused the divorce. Who is her husband? What’s his beef? What does it mean if a suburban household breaks apart after nearly 30 years of marriage? Maybe nothing.
Such is the nature of some airport conversations—I get only half the story, the glimpse from the bicycle, the partial reality, the woman with her rescued cat managing a sorrow-imposed diet plan.
Airports, when we pay attention to something other than ourselves for a moment, make us wonder about people’s stories. The guy standing across from me in the Dallas Skyline as we travel between Terminal E and D is wearing a purplish-gray SIG ball cap and a Joe Rogan Experience t-shirt. Rogan’s third eye stares at me from across the car, the only thing apparently willing to meet my gaze. His hand holds the railing above as the train car lurches, and three bullet tattoos peep at me from the inside right bicep.
I stand in line behind another guy as we both wait in the CLEAR line. “It has Angry Birds potential,” he exclaims. His phone screen shows the face and torso of another person on the video call. You have to take a Zoom call in the security line of the airport? I think to myself. Couldn’t it at least have just been a phone call? He’s wearing a teal beanie, athleisure pants, and a canvas blue backpack with leather straps. He fidgets—bouncing from foot to foot, adjusting his backpack, switching the phone from one hand to the other. He keeps saying things like, “That’s why I like the casual gaming space. The market is already oversaturated” or “We can put it into testing next week” or “We could do all sorts of things, like replace the rag doll with a skeleton.”
Why do we feel the need to take business calls in the middle of the security lane? What about our self-worth will be so damaged if we aren’t seen (supposedly) making money as we wait to catch an airplane with an economy class ticket? But the meeting apparently has potential. “Profit-splitting,” he explains to the torso on the screen, “can be discussed later.”
I, for one, am excited about the next big thing in the casual gaming space where the rag doll turns into a skeleton.
I meet an unlikely janitor in France’s Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris.
I hear birds in Terminal 2F, but they’re out of sight in the white spine of lights that runs down the center of the glass ceiling. As I wait to board, standing in a queue that seems pointless, a small, brown, nondescript bird appears. It alights on a T.V., resting, waiting, watching. What does this small bird know about television? Or its glass habitat? I think to myself. Does it miss the blue skies and fresh air? Was it born in this place? Its head swivels ceaselessly, rapidly twitching in that erratic way birds observe the things around them. Without any prelude it quits its perch atop the T.V. and swoops between the people in the queue, deftly flying beneath the rows of red chairs covered in an airport’s plastic approximation of comfort. It lands and begins to clean-up after the passengers one crumb at a time.
Hop. Crumb. Hop, hop. Crumb. Crumb.
Airports, for the most part, are melting pots. A wide socioeconomic swathe of people huddle en masse and then are herded by other people in dark blue uniforms and neck scarves into confined spaces for a brief period of time. The people in uniforms are allegedly able take care of all of us if the plane descends into a burning inferno. I’m not sure which movie scene is most appropriate, Gwyneth Paltrow in View from the Top racing to complete her training or the stewardess in Airplane shaking and slapping an hysterical passenger in an effort to calm her down. Hopefully neither.
As we’re guided onto the metal tube of the plane we walk past First Class passengers who stare at most of us with a look of–what? Is it pity? It’s not necessarily scorn. It’s more like relief, relief to be where they are and not plodding to the back of the plane, forced to rub elbows with the peons and peasants placed in economy class. But can you blame them? How many of us wouldn’t trade spaces? And how much do we actually want to rub shoulders with our fellow passengers? Regardless of our religious persuasion we all offer silent prayers to the Universe that the middle seat remains empty. Or, if it’s filled, that it’s the most petite Asian woman we’ve ever laid eyes on.
Advertisements bombard me as I land at JFK. I read “HSBC” painted across the outside of the jetway in bold, red lettering. I suddenly see a terrifying vision of the future, a future where consumerism envelopes us, pushing things to the point where every step, stair, wall, and surface is covered in advertisements and our minds and eyes can’t get a moment’s respite; screens and posters flashing messages about designer clothing or mental health or pet food or erectile dysfunction. Just as I recover from this dystopian vision, I walk inside and see an endless row of shirtless Adam Drivers plastering the support pillars. His six pack abs ripple down the column and he’s giving his best blue steel. The detail is so clear and the image so large that I can see the wispy chest hairs poking from between his chiseled pectorals.
All in the name of selling Burberry, apparently.
Speaking of Burberry: clothing in airports. The topic defies categorization or opening sentences. Some of us might still have parents or grandparents who tell stories about how airports used to command a certain level of gravitas. “People dressed up,” they might say with a tinge of sadness, “now they just wear pajamas.” And they’re partially right. While the rise of athleisure has given us a definite airport uniform, a gate waiting area still seems to be a showcase of people in various states of undress, all desperately trying to pretend they’re less anxious than they appear.
Like all memorable moments, the scene possesses its archetypes: the businessman in open collar and sports coat, his one small carry-on a power move to show the rest of us that he’s important enough for his company to fly him out here on a 24-hour trip; or the couple trying to corral their five children, all wearing a variety of things which most likely are their pajamas; or the older couple dressed for what apparently is a safari, until you look at the boarding information and see they’re flying to San Diego.
Regardless of sartorial choice everyone expectantly waits like kittens mewing at the teat, desperate to hear the steward or stewardess call their boarding group. But there are always those more ambitious passengers at the gate who circle like vultures, eyeing the loading ramp hungrily. Then after every other boarding group is called and they’re still there circling ravenously you realize with disgust: They’re Group 4.
I discovered airport lounges in my mid-20s.
I got a credit card that came with some incredible perks, the most important one being that I could now access every American Express Centurion Lounge and Delta Skyclub for free. There’s now a clear dividing line in my chronological travel history: Before Lounge Access and After Lounge Access. B.L.A. I tried to orchestrate my airport arrival so that I spent as little time as possible in the airport itself. It was the perfect game of time-roulette, getting to my gate exactly as they started boarding my group number. A.L.A. I looked up how early I could get to the lounge to sip cocktails and sample the array of free food.
In AMEX Lounges, the food, tea, coffee, beer, wine, and cocktails are free. And people who might not usually take a drink before noon happily sip beers at 11am while those with less inhibitions–myself included–are frustrated that hard alcohol isn’t served until 10:30am. After all, everything seems more important with a drink in your hand. A phone call to a friend taken in the lounge with a glass of champagne and some vigorous head-nodding makes it look like you’re closing a billion-dollar deal. There’s a guy sitting in the corner of the Delta Lounge at JFK, Terminal 2. He looks a bit like Adam Sandler with a ball cap, and he’s holding a glass of whisky at a precarious angle, staring at his computer screen and nodding as he talks into AirPods. “That’s how deals get done,” he says.
Conversations in airport lounges are odd and exciting and fantastic. The gay couple next to me—both immaculately groomed—one in brown chinos and a denim jacket, a rainbow pin affixed prominently to his lapel, points to another lounge-goer and says: “I would never wear sweatpants to the airport.” Scandalized, his partner agrees. Or the middle-aged couple sitting across from me discussing the renovations to their house—is it their primary residence or a second home? I can’t tell. Maybe neither can they. The blonde woman wearing a black leather jacket and short green skirt crochets a pink scarf and occasionally sips from her white wine. I head to the bar to get a cocktail. “When are you going to cash in on your Bitcoin?” the bartender jauntily asks one patron, part of a duo of middle-aged men flying to NYC. “If I cash in now,” one replies, “then I would be flying on a private jet. I wouldn’t be here.” (This, of course, when BTC was a cool $50,000 per coin. I wonder what he’s thinking now.) A predictable conversation ensues as I wait for my Old Fashioned. They talk about people who “got in early” in 2010, or those who sold 6 BTC for a dinner in 2013, or those who have a lot but are holding onto it. “I’m not sure how much he has, “ says one, “but he could definitely get a private jet.” I return to my seat. The couple renovating their house is still at it. “That’s what they’re calling ash. That’s what they’re calling sable,” says the middle-aged man as he points to the iPad. They scroll lazily through various kinds of wood. The woman continues knitting until they’re interrupted by a phone call.
Should I feel camaraderie with these people around me? Instead, I often feel suspicious or competitive. Airport lounges are strange and interesting places—not quite real life, not quite paradise, an in-between place. I used to walk by people sitting in the main concourse and think “Why are you sitting here when you could be up there?” At the same time, I realize, I don’t want them “up there”. After all, everyone in an airport lounge retains the right to be pretentious.
I watch several kids serving themselves from the buffet and wonder what it's like to be a child in an airport lounge. When I traveled as a child with my five siblings and parents we rarely flew, the cost too prohibitive. On the rare occasion we did fly, we chose the cheapest airline, brought our own food, and ordered water from restaurants. So, what does one expect from life when at ten-years-old you serve yourself from a buffet adorned with chicken in a pesto cream sauce and garlic risotto made by a named chef; when your parents complain about the length of the line at the free bar at 10:00am; when you altogether avoid the discomfortable purgatory of the airport waiting area? Does it skew your perspective? Does it make you believe that the most inconvenient and most uncomfortable situations in life can—and should—be avoided?
And, most importantly, are avoided with enough money.
It’s a Thursday afternoon, and I’m delayed leaving the house. By the time I arrive at the airport, I feel anxious seeing how busy Denver's airport is, and I keep checking my watch. Do I have time? I daydream of a 4 o’clock martini and a comfortable chair, watching the mortals in the terminal below milling about like ants. (Clearly the lounge has now passed into some sort of entitled necessity for me.) Then the worst happens. I show up and there’s a long line. I mean a long line. The concierge announces, “The American Express Centurion Lounge is at capacity and there will be a 20-30 minute wait.” This is greeted with a significant amount of grumbling from the lounge-goers stuck on the outside, like myself.
A woman in a Stetson hat dressed like she just came from Aspen asks a question, “What if we’re Platinum card holders?” which is an objectively dumb question because everyone standing in line happens to be a Platinum card holder. Instead of pointing out the obvious, the concierge calmly overlooks the stupidity of the question and replies that the wait applies to everyone. By this point I think to myself, Wait a second! She didn’t come from Aspen if she’s flying commercial. Then the would-be Aspen woman looks at her friend, who’s dressed similarly in black leather pants and a dark green Stetson, and they exchange exasperated looks as if to say that nothing is more inconvenient than being denied access to the airport lounge after a week away in the mountains, and they might as well die, or worse, be poor. I put my name on the waitlist and head downstairs into the melee of people and bad coffee.
As I wait, ready to succor myself on the nectar and ambrosia of the gods, several people are turned away from the entrance. They walk past me in disgust, grumbling about the inconvenience. It makes me wonder whether I want to be part of the crowd that goes to airport lounges. Then I remember. Of course I do. Which is why I’m waiting patiently for half an hour, so that for a brief period of time I, too, can pretend that I’m divine.
Jean-Luc is co-editor of The Hart & The Cur
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Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta Airport, Terminal B, Delta Skyclub, May 24, 2022.
A man with a gray goatee walks up to the bar in shorts, flip-flops, and blue athletic sweatshirt. He’s not quite overweight, but there are a few extra pounds packed around his midriff.
The bartender: “Sir, what can I get you?”
The man thumbs several $1 bills in his large fingers. “First of all,” he says, “don’t call me ‘sir’. Second, I want a copious amount of vodka and a small amount of orange juice.”