There is nothing quite like trying to doze off while sitting in an airport armchair as Muzak plays on relentlessly through the night, so I slept fitfully and sporadically hour after hour, various pop tunes that spanned the decades continuously accosting my ears.
This is how you do it at Kennedy International, a gal dozing while waiting for the last flight of the night.
At 1:00 AM an airport security type approached me, explaining that the concourse actually closes at 1, while I retorted that I had an early morning flight. He said he would see if my staying was OK with his supervisor, and since he never came back, I guess it was.
The concourse is all but empty now after 1:00 AM, save for janitorial crews.
First arrival flight of Friday morning
Around 4:00 AM passengers began trickling into Gate 7, rousting me out of "bed". Then all of a sudden they all, more or less, got up together and left. The gate must have just been changed I figured. I found a nearby departure display board. Yep, now Flight 1141 had been reassigned to Gate 47. More trekking about the concourse! Finally I was sitting, along with a steadily growing crowd, at the right gate, boarding time slowly approaching.
But when you got the airport Blues, it only gets bluer. A boarding agent was suddenly announcing that due to the fact that some of the flight crew, i.e. enough flight attendants, hadn't showed up yet, FAA regulations prohibited loading the passengers yet, and so boarding, and the flight itself, were both delayed a half hour. As small compensation at this point, they also called me to the counter to give me a boarding pass. I had made the flight, but would this be a Pyrrhic victory? You could sense anxiety in the passengers ramping up, and some of them were already stoked on Starbucks coffee. These early morning flights always had a lot of important connecting flights.
The minutes slowly ticked by. When the first missing flight attendant finally reached the security barricade about five minutes away from us and notified our agents, this was announced with enthusiastic excitement, as if Elvis had now entered the building. A few minutes later she strolled in, nonchalantly, towing her luggage, as if she had never missed a beat, then proceeded through the security door leading to the plane, generating a bit of hoopla. Stuck in the snow in the frigid streets of NYC, or had she been out partying too late?
An appropriate message for all at Kennedy
Finally, we began boarding, already over 30 minutes behind schedule. As the large queue slowly dwindled, another flight attendant, perhaps a hastily called standby, hair somewhat disheveled, came racing past me, luggage wheels just about smokin', to also duck into the plane. I kept looking at my watch. Now we were cutting it close again.
Finally everyone was seated, the door closed, the rote libations to safety were announced and the plane, after a short wait on the tarmac, took off like the proverbial bat out of that frozen ring in Hell, headed due south. We were now 45 minutes behind schedule but the pilot was determined to make that up. Making my Haiti flight wasn't a done deal, but it was looking better.
We touched down at Miami International around 9:20 to sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. By time we were docked and offloaded, it was another fifteen minutes, but thankfully Flight 1291 to Haiti was only four gates away and the distance quickly traversed. They were already boarding the passengers, and Georgianne was nowhere around, so she must already be on the flight.
Once inside I spied her shortish blonde hair peaking over a seat in the middle rows and slid up behind her. She was talking to a Haitian gentleman who turned out to be an in-law of Popa Doc Duvalier himself. How is that for synchronistic timing and location for a political journalist?
Georgianne was more than happy to see me, having worried that I still might not make it. Then it turns out that the Duvalier-related fellow was in the wrong seat, thus he decided to vacate it, giving me plentiful room to sit next to Georgianne on what was not a full flight, so I was able to keep the seat as we started sharing notes and a few laughs over my misadventures in the frozen Big Apple North.
At 10:05 AM or so I was at long last disappearing beyond the horizon of Miami into the blue skies over the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, heading for colorful, never a dull moment Haiti.
Touchdown in Haiti
This is how you do it at Kennedy International, a gal dozing while waiting for the last flight of the night.
At 1:00 AM an airport security type approached me, explaining that the concourse actually closes at 1, while I retorted that I had an early morning flight. He said he would see if my staying was OK with his supervisor, and since he never came back, I guess it was.
The concourse is all but empty now after 1:00 AM, save for janitorial crews.
First arrival flight of Friday morning
Around 4:00 AM passengers began trickling into Gate 7, rousting me out of "bed". Then all of a sudden they all, more or less, got up together and left. The gate must have just been changed I figured. I found a nearby departure display board. Yep, now Flight 1141 had been reassigned to Gate 47. More trekking about the concourse! Finally I was sitting, along with a steadily growing crowd, at the right gate, boarding time slowly approaching.
But when you got the airport Blues, it only gets bluer. A boarding agent was suddenly announcing that due to the fact that some of the flight crew, i.e. enough flight attendants, hadn't showed up yet, FAA regulations prohibited loading the passengers yet, and so boarding, and the flight itself, were both delayed a half hour. As small compensation at this point, they also called me to the counter to give me a boarding pass. I had made the flight, but would this be a Pyrrhic victory? You could sense anxiety in the passengers ramping up, and some of them were already stoked on Starbucks coffee. These early morning flights always had a lot of important connecting flights.
The minutes slowly ticked by. When the first missing flight attendant finally reached the security barricade about five minutes away from us and notified our agents, this was announced with enthusiastic excitement, as if Elvis had now entered the building. A few minutes later she strolled in, nonchalantly, towing her luggage, as if she had never missed a beat, then proceeded through the security door leading to the plane, generating a bit of hoopla. Stuck in the snow in the frigid streets of NYC, or had she been out partying too late?
An appropriate message for all at Kennedy
Finally, we began boarding, already over 30 minutes behind schedule. As the large queue slowly dwindled, another flight attendant, perhaps a hastily called standby, hair somewhat disheveled, came racing past me, luggage wheels just about smokin', to also duck into the plane. I kept looking at my watch. Now we were cutting it close again.
Finally everyone was seated, the door closed, the rote libations to safety were announced and the plane, after a short wait on the tarmac, took off like the proverbial bat out of that frozen ring in Hell, headed due south. We were now 45 minutes behind schedule but the pilot was determined to make that up. Making my Haiti flight wasn't a done deal, but it was looking better.
We touched down at Miami International around 9:20 to sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. By time we were docked and offloaded, it was another fifteen minutes, but thankfully Flight 1291 to Haiti was only four gates away and the distance quickly traversed. They were already boarding the passengers, and Georgianne was nowhere around, so she must already be on the flight.
Once inside I spied her shortish blonde hair peaking over a seat in the middle rows and slid up behind her. She was talking to a Haitian gentleman who turned out to be an in-law of Popa Doc Duvalier himself. How is that for synchronistic timing and location for a political journalist?
Georgianne was more than happy to see me, having worried that I still might not make it. Then it turns out that the Duvalier-related fellow was in the wrong seat, thus he decided to vacate it, giving me plentiful room to sit next to Georgianne on what was not a full flight, so I was able to keep the seat as we started sharing notes and a few laughs over my misadventures in the frozen Big Apple North.
At 10:05 AM or so I was at long last disappearing beyond the horizon of Miami into the blue skies over the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, heading for colorful, never a dull moment Haiti.
Touchdown in Haiti
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