Marion's Miscellaneous Musings

airports

The top picture is my first view of Europe. We are flying just over the south part of England. Off to the northeast you can see Belgium and The Netherlands, and possibly parts of Germany. I am sitting on the north side of the airplane, so I'm sorry I can't show you southern France or Spain.

The second picture is Charles De Gaulle airport. This is possibly the worst airport in the civilized world. (But I don't fly much, and one of my friends says that Heathrow is worse.) The terminal is two straight lines. (This is something the French do not understand, see below.) This means that you have to walk past every single gate before you find yours. Sensible airports like Sea-Tac and Salt Lake City have concourses where you can just walk past the entrance to, say, 30 gates in one fell swoop. Atlanta Hartsfield is also sensible like this, but it takes longer to get anywhere.

Plus it is under construction. So, I got on the bus at 8:20, drove around the airport, went through customs, and proceeded to walk the entire airport (following signs) to my gate. Arrival at gate: 9:35. I kid you not, and I only got lost once for about 5 minutes. (But I made up for that by cutting to the front of the line at customs.) Plus there was a security incident, and men in camoflage were directing us around one of the terminals, but I don't think that made much difference. Fortunately I had a 3 hour layover. My bags made the 9:00 flight to Hamburg and were merrily getting dizzy on the carousel for two hours. Fortunately I had not packed any wine, so they recovered well.

Schilpol in Amsterdam is one of those sensible airports. Time from getting off the flight, finding a bathroom, going through customs, getting my luggage and going to the arrivals area: perhaps a half an hour. JFK does not appear to be a sensible airport at all, but the signs are marked well. Less than 10 minutes going to Europe, perhaps a half an hour coming back. And that includes two computer shutdowns at customs. (So my luggage beat me to the claim area, but the employess had to make room for all the others and they took mine off. So they couldn't ride the carousel again.)

I decided early on that the French were rude, because they kept pushing ahead of me in the crowd (I certainly couldn't call it a line) at the security screening. The only recourse was to act French and push ahead myself. Three days later I realized that this had worked to my benefit: I had assumed that I didn't have to go through customs in France because I was going to Germany, and bypassed that line entirely. The helpful employee told me to go to the next customs agent, NOT to the back of the line. So, are the French rude?

One more incident to consider: In Prague, squeezed into the subway with a tour group of about 40 French, Aja (my former exchange student and personal tour guide extrodinaire) said we needed to get off at the next stop if we could. At that stop I simply said "Excusez-mos, s'il vous plait," (with an obvious US accent) and this crowd of people parted just like the Red Sea.

No, the French are not rude. They just live by different rules.

Oh, that shuttle bus ride back to the airplane for Hamburg? It let us off next to the plane we came in on. I could have caught that 9:00 flight instead of the 11:00 I was scheduled for. If I didn't have to go through customs and there had been room on the flight and if I didn't have to go through security and...if the rules were completely re-written and the terminal set up for me. But that is an American attitude and that's rude.

Addendum:

At JFK on the way to Europe, the plane left the gate at 7:00. At say, 7:55, the pilot announced "There are 17 planes ahead of us, so it should be another 25 minutes." We took off at 8:20 and had an on-time arrival at CDG. One the return trip, the announcement was: "There are only 8 planes ahead of us, but they are also using this runway for landings, so it will be another half hour." Based on the statistically insignificant 2 observations, it takes 1 1/2 hours to take off from JFK.

At my airport, there are 5 gates. They use only 3, and most of the time need only 1. I woke up at 5:42 and made a 6:35 flight. That 1 1/2 hour wait time at JFK is the entire flight time between my airport and Salf Lake City.

posted by Marion @ 4:21 AM