[Rhodes22-list] ss report: Waiting for Detelin

[john Belanger]

stan,
   i hope you won't take offense, but i found myself reading this in a "guy noir private eye" voice. hilarious, thanks. john b

stan <stan at rhodes22.com> wrote:
  (for when the List gets too quiet) 


"Dido" is no longer with us. He has moved on (with our blessings) to a better job with "Regulator" on the other side of town. Rose and I had gone to the airport to pick him up. He was coming in from Dulles on the last leg of his usual flight pattern from Bulgaria. The flight was scheduled to arrive at 6:02 and I played it safe by arriving at ORF at 5 pm. (Rose had finally found out that ORF is code for Norfolk International. What a beautiful Airport. I would have named it JKI (Joyce Kilmer International). The architectural firm had been handed an unspoiled waterfront section of town with the instructions to save every possible tree. And so they did. The entrance road, winding around water ways and under tall leafy limbs, makes its way to a beautiful terminal, in turn connected by a long covered moving sidewalk to parking and baggage buildings tucked in this gem of an airport, whose warts I was soon to discover.

The first thing I noticed when the moving sidewalk ejected me into the arrival and departure chapel's upper terminal floor was the yellow notice advising that United 7239 was going to be one half hour early. I had never heard of a flight being early. Well not a one hour flight being a half hour early ! Even I, who had the US Navy Air Corp on my resume, knew something was wrong in Denmark, or at least in Bulgaria. All of the terminal schedule displays were in agreement: United flight 7239 arriving from Dulles was going to be a half hour early. Good thing we came early. With my computer disturbed by the math, I kept checking and rechecking the displays until, low and behold, the yellow sign disappeared and the flight was now listed as being on time.

Rose and I settled into the first two seats this side of the security border so no arrivees could pass us undetected. Flight after flight unloaded. No Dido. Having lost trust in the schedule displays I continued checking for changes. When a flight arrived the sign would say, "Landed". No such sign for my now overdue flight. In fact all of a sudden my flight completely disappeared from all screens. Surely, with all these bright faced, tagged, uniformed airport personnel randomly flying around inside the terminal I would quickly find out Dido's fate and the fate of United's 7239, off the screen
somewhere between Washington and Norfolk. 

The easiest person to ask was the attendant at the security gate. He said he works for a different company and has no idea. I noticed a sign that said this way to "Information", a few football fields to the east. The lone attendant, whose uniformed chest was loaded with military medals, said that he worked for another company and according to his computer, that flight had landed on time. He was not interested in understanding why the schedule displays had missed this; they worked for a different company. I had a bright idea. I would take the external elevator for its full one floor run to the United ticket counter underneath me. It was a two second trip but I concluded the view made the cost of this glass walled theme park ride worth every penny that it must have cost.

At United's ticket counter neither of the two parallel lines of potential flyers was moving so I bullied my way to one of the three attendants. He said he worked for a different company and left. The second attendant admitted working for United and said that that flight had not landed, that the non moving lines were waiting to take that flight back to wherever it had come from and that there was much snow in Chicago where that flight from Dulles originated and that that plane has just now made it into the Chicago air and that it would be very late tonight before it landed in Norfolk since it still had to make it to Dulles. At least she didn't work for a different company. She worked for United - I would go with her. And I would be a good citizen and go back and bring the Information bunker up to speed. But another look at his computer confirmed again, at least for the Information attendant, that 7239 had landed. He explained that the company he works for has t
o go with the company the computer works for no matter what the company the ticket lady works for says. 

I asked him to call the pilot's lounge and see if they knew anything and he said he can not do that. The tower? He said he can't do that. Chicago? He said he does not have that number. He said I should go back to United and ask them to verify their story. So back I made it to the United ticket line. They seemed to be busy giving refunds but I went to the front of the line and the helpful lady went back to the computer - the flight was somewhere in the air and she had no fixed time of arrival yet and that I should go home and come back later. Home was hours away in NC so I decided to make one final visit to Information who stuck to his story that the flight had landed. I asked if there was some sort of court of appeals I could take my case to - he said no such higher authority. In a fit of humorous creativity I asked if there was a lower authority I could go to, like "baggage". To my surprise the Information attendant was impressed, so off I hiked to the tiny
United baggage office which turned out to be conveniently located at the farthest end of the complex. By now most of the airport was closed down and all the commercial booths were under tarps but the United baggage office light was on and the office door was open and there was a nice lady behind the counter shuffling luggage.

I told her my story of getting different endings for flight 7239. She looked at me with amusement and said she worked for a different company and could tell me without any ifs or buts that that flight had long since landed and that she personally had taken its unclaimed bags off the carousel. And further more that she could tell me that Detelin had not been on that plane. I exploded, "What, you know who is on each flight?" and she said, "of course". My god, I had stumbled onto the Central Intelligence Agency of the entire airport operation cleverly headquartered in baggage. I would go back to the United counter and tell them the flight they were looking for had actually landed long ago and that is why they could not find it. By now I had found that by taking the walking sidewalk in the wrong direction I could run and get to the other end much slower which was great for my exercise program. On the escalator part of my trips I would go up the down stairway. 
My exercising exercise got me late to United ticketing territory. It was closed and its two non moving lines had moved. Somehow this darkened, quiet, peaceful part of the airport inspired an inspirational thought. I would ask the CIA bag lady for the passenger names on the next flight from Dulles that was due in at 11:30. Brilliant.

A flight had come in from somewhere and the bag lady was doing her thing. She did not seem pleased to see me. By now I was well known by most of the airport's night crew. The Information guy waved to me as I flew by his booth. I said to the bag lady, "tell me if Detelin is on the 11:30 flight". I think this is when my bearded face finally came into full focus and reminded her of the oath. "It is against the law for me to give out passengers' names."

Now I am not dumb. I have seen "All the King's Men" two times. I know how Bernstein and Woodward handle these kinds of situations.

"I don't want you to tell me the names of any of the passengers" I said, " I just want you to tell me if I should wait for the 11:30 ".

The bag lady, relieved by my professionalism, whispered, "wait for the 11:30".


What does one do at an airport for six and one half hours, other than use the gym.

Rose and I noticed a lot of loving. As each flight unloaded, as soon as its passengers crossed the security line, someone on the insecure side grabbed them and kissed them - sometimes for indecently long times. What the hell, I would grab the solo traveling ladies and hug and kiss them. then say, "Oops, I am sorry. I thought you were someone else". (With Rose sitting there, this was my fantasy so let me add that each time I broke off with the hugging and kissing and got to the part where I said, Oh, I thought you were someone else, there were expressions of disappointment.) 

It looked like it was going to take a day to pick up Dido but 11:30 came just in time. The flight was on time. Dido was the first one to cross the security line and I found myself saying, "What are you doing here so early. We did not expect you for another two days. Rose, on the other hand, quietly got off her now well warmed seat and hugged and kissed Dido - for an indecently long time and he opened his bag and gave her a beautiful Bulgarian wool blanket. And what does the one who did all the hard investigative exercising and fantasizing get?

Well maybe the short lived satisfaction that goes with "mission accomplished"....


I'll sign this one with a Spitzer since the end sounds like one - or maybe Carter.
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