The (Partly) Friendly Skies

September 25, 2021

I’m on a short trip to Toronto, my first in almost two years. Hallo again, my long-term domicile – I just came back here from Mexico City, via Houston Airport.

Most of the world’s airports shut down around 11.00 pm. Residents living nearby plead and lobby for the sound of jet engines to disappear while they sleep, and the authorities eventually comply. There are mostly cleaners and security guards around after that.

Benito Juarez Airport in Mexico City is a little different. Not many flights arrive after 11.00 pm but there are a few coming in from Asia and elsewhere. More to the point, an outgoing flock of jetliners take off before 6.30 am, so that people using these need to arrive very early in the morning. A simple alternative is to show up around midnight, and hang out there till flight-time.

My plane to Toronto was at 5.40 am, so I joined this strange nighttime community late on the evening before. I was surprised to find that several souvenir stalls stayed open till the small hours, while a couple of restaurants and some of the currency exchange windows never close. If you should ever become one of those stateless people stranded in an airport for months, Benito Juarez might be a decent place to do it. 

There’s always some activity, and the security staff are probably friendlier than you would find elsewhere. The noise level isn’t modest, especially since some of the floors are currently being ripped up and replaced at night in Terminal One. But Mexicans, who live with a lot of noise, can sleep through it till dawn, huddled down beside concrete pillars or on little-used stretches of corridor. I tried that, but ended up wandering from one end of Terminal One to the other in a slow, ambling stroll with my wheeled suitcase.

George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston was a very different proposition. I had to join a snaking line of people that took half an hour to reach the booths of the Homeland Security officers. Then, the terminals are connected by a driverless rail system, but getting from one to another still takes some minutes. With only ninety minutes between my flights, I started getting a little nervous. Then when I got to the security check needed before boarding. I became resigned to missing my second plane. It seemed chaotic, with different staff bawling about us getting rid of water bottles and such, like naughty kids in school. Most carry-on bags were being checked manually after the X-ray examination, and I finally got through, with my shoes back on my feet, just seventeen minutes before departure. 

I’d had no breakfast, so I stopped my headlong rush to my gate at a stand and grabbed a sandwich. Remember, there’s no real food for Economy-class passengers on flights under a few hours’ duration any more. Does C$18 seem a lot for an eight-inch sub? A friend of mine paid US$27 for not much more food, a few months ago, so I decided things were looking up in airportland as I resumed my headlong quick march to what seemed to be the furthest extreme of the building.

The last of the queue for my United Airlines flight was just going through the final ticket check when I reached the gate. I was third from the back of the line, as two other panic-stricken people ran up as I took my place, so I now felt I could relax.

But late-phase pandemic airline travel isn’t something to relax over.

After we were airborne, a man two rows up from me suddenly found from neighbours that he was on the wrong flight: he was supposed to be on a plane to Cincinnati. He was European, and tried to put a brave face on it, not demanding his rights, since Canada isn’t a dangerous destination, but obviously his day was being far more stressful than mine.

An hour or two along in the air, we hit serious and persistent turbulence, presumably related to a rainy storm-front further north. The pilot then came on the speaker system to tell us that ‘the company’ had instructed him to make a stop in Cincinnati to refuel, so he had to do this. When we had touched down, a young and serious-looking United Airlines representative came on, and approached the mis-planed passenger, to escort him off. And, I would guess, to sign some legal documents relating to the airline’s non-liability.

The pilot made various noises about the refuelling process and its paperwork, but there were skeptics among us passengers. Pilots always take off with an emergency fuel reserve in case of bad weather or a delay in landing. I imagine if the ticket-checkers can’t put you on the correct aircraft properly, the airline faces a potentially big lawsuit.

I had deliberately planned my day so that time wasn’t an issue, and when we took off around the hour the flight should have been at Pearson International in Toronto, I wasn’t really bothered. Other passengers, who might have missed connections, might have felt less anguine.

As I’ve often reflected before, while Mexico has the reputation of being inefficient and lazy, it seems to do quite well managing most of its transportation systems. I don’t want to dump on Texas, but … heck, yes, I do want to dump on Texas. A cramped, noisy security area with staff barking at the passengers doesn’t give anyone a sense that things are properly in hand. A truly wise airport administration would figure out a way to connect international travellers direct to ongoing flights so they don’t have to leave a secure area and need not be checked by customs officers or searched for illegal stuff in their luggage. The practice is common in a number of European airports: just stay within designated areas or sections, so you have never technically entered the country. Your security check where you boarded should be enough to keep everyone safe. And even if a further luggage check is called for, the whole passports performance for people who aren’t actually going into the US could be skipped entirely.

As for the cabin crew who directed a passenger onto the wrong flight … well, I imagine somebody’s employment prospects diminished after that. 

Not my problem, though. 

And at Pearson, the Customs and Immigration people had me through in under eight minutes, even with a check on my new ArriveCAN vaccination documentation. Nobody in the arrivals hall spoke in anything above a polite Canadian murmur.