Come Lounge With Me

Surprise surprise, another airport entry; although at least this time I’m actually in New York. Today I find myself wallowing in the perpetual disappointment that is JFK. For a city that claims to be the world’s capital it certainly doesn’t show it at this airport. Arrivals through immigration are almost always met with surly officers, remind me but I think “being courteous” is one of the “pledges” made by Border Control on their posters in the hall. As for Departures, forget any level of comfort, novelty shopping, or hospitality; the seating areas just about sum it up: blocks of concrete. I’m serious, dull grey sections of concrete straight out of The Projects. People spend significant amounts of time on their arses in these places - flights are delayed and you have to arrive at airports earlier than ever before - surely there needs to be more than a cement-seat to pander your buttocks? And it’s not as if these are aging terminals, JFK underwent significant renovations a couple of years back. Remember The Terminal with Tom Hanks? That film's set at JFK. In one scene he's having a canglelight dinner with Catherine Zeta-Jones on a picturesque glass mezzanine, very romantic - very not here. Well, at least not Terminal 4 (or 7). If anything this terminal set was designed in the third grade creative drawing class at PS62 down the road.

An amazing array of shops - all six stores

One thing I've noticed, which I realise is common to many airports, is the presence of a luggage shop. At what point do you get through check-in and into the departures lounge to realise that now’s the time to buy a 32” suitcase? Are there people arriving at airports, their clothes in hand with a trail of socks and underpants behind them, who had awoken that morning thinking, “I haven’t got time to pack, I’ll do it at the airport”?

An amazing array of urinals

So, I'm now through security on the way to my gate; I note we live in a time when you can literally strip down in public without any need for prompting - off with the shoes, belt and jacket, the trousers fall down when you release your grip on them to get "wanded". And an added nugget of amusement for the staff: the lady behind me was repeatedly asked to go through the metal-detecting arch which was continually sounding because she was too large to avoid knocking against its sides. A deep breath and a crabbing motion finally saw her through unbleeped. This nation should know better, those detectors need to be 50% larger. Still at least she’s got comfy seats to look forward to on this side of the terminal, her security risk rear will be content. And the bar is always well populated with travellers who seem to be equally happy that they’ve finally found some form of distraction for an hour or two, a last chance to sip a Manhattan. They may miss the city but definitely not its airport.

Come Fly With Me

When I started out with this blog my intention was to scribe my discoveries and experiences of New York. The trouble is I’ve had scant chance to do any discovering and experiencing since I’ve been there. Every time I start to get settled I get wrenched off across the Atlantic and quite often beyond that; these very words are being written 1695 miles away, it’s -52 degC outside and I’m at the very unnatural height of 37000 feet travelling at the very unnatural speed of 552mph. Today I’ve learnt that the town of Umanak in Greenland was settled in 1763 as a sealing port. What an education this is.

I’ve spent 52 hours in the air these past thirteen days – FIFTY-TWO! If I was a dog that would be a total of 15 days in the sky, which is two days more than I’ve actually been away for. Confused? Imagine how I feel. It's a long time to be in the company of one's own thoughts – although I guess it would be a dream scenario for a schizophrenic. I’ve reached the stage where I’m actually asking the flight crew ridiculous questions like what hotels they prefer in different cities, or how they stop their skin from peeling off due to the dry recycled air, or how much fuel we’ve consumed on a specific sector - and then I’ve walked around the aircraft counting the number of passengers in order to calculate fuel consumptions. For example: the flight I was on a couple of days ago used 50,000kg of fuel. It only had 48 passengers on board. That’s 1042kg of fuel burnt per person – about 388 gallons! Conservatively it takes our family car nearly two years to burn that quantity of fuel. 86 years it would have taken us to use the total amount of fuel consumed on that particular journey. The attendant seemed to twig I was getting bored and actually got the only passenger in first class to come out to talk to me after that little revelation.

Imagine, 48 people on a flight that had space for over 300, I actually had an entire aircraft section to myself. It meant that I got my very own safety demonstration before we took off too. The attendant seemed a bit confused as to whether she should stand in front of me and show me how to open and close my belt buckle or whether she should perform to the other empty seats. Being an Air India flight she then had to do the whole demonstration again for the Hindi translation, which just prolonged the agony for the poor girl. I had to smile. I chuckled during the check-in too, there was a sign stating, “Do not carry these items on your person,” and then below were listed the usual suspects: sharp objects, flammables, compressed gas, etc. but there, tucked away at the end, were a couple of pictures I wasn’t used to seeing: a hand grenade and a glowing stick of radioactive material. A sign of the times perhaps?

Anyway, while I’m on the subject of air travel, a few things have occurred to me over the past few days:

1) When has anyone had to use the life vests or the inflatable rafts? In the history of commercial air travel how many times has an aircraft successfully landed on water? I’ll tell you. Once. November 23, 1996 when a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines 767 ditched into the sea – there were 52 survivors. Even then the plane partially broke up. From my understanding aircraft do not glide like ducks onto the surface of the sea, it’s more like hitting a hillocky field of concrete at 150mph. Instead of hearing, “Life vests can be found under your seats,” during the safety briefing wouldn’t it be better to hear, “In the event of an emergency controlled explosives will blow out the emergency doors located here, here and here; parachutes can be found under your seats.” Personally I would rather take my chances bailing out at 10,000 feet.

2) On the subject of hard landings, why not make the seats rear facing? And what’s with those whiplash belts you wear across the midriff? Even cars strap you in across the chest and they’re only doing 70-80mph at the best of times.

3) Oxygen masks. My guess is that rapid decompression would probably blow out most people’s eardrums; the last thing on your mind would be calmly placing one of those dangly yellow bags around your mouth before attending to your little one. Nevertheless, assuming all’s well there and you’ve made it to the ground in one piece, you then have to find your emergency exit – through the toxic fumes. But your mask is only attached to its supply by a short umbilical. Smoke inhalation is one of the biggest killers in an airline accident (aside from the obvious impact) so why not have detachable gas masks? I know, I know, it’s too expensive and probably only a solution for the first and business class passengers but Britain managed to supply an entire nation with masks during WW2, surely there must be loads left over from back then?

4) It's been drilled into us that mobile phones interfere with aircraft communication systems and must be turned off, but I'm sure that a few people must leave them on accidentally - left in bags and jacket pockets. And Singapore Airlines for one now has wireless internet access available on their flights and will soon have a system in place to let you use your mobile phones in-flight too. So what's the big cover up? Do phone signals really interfere with aircraft systems?

5) Why did I get a plastic knife with my food but a metal fork?

I’m sure I’ve put a few of you off flying for now so I’ll wrap it there. It’s also time for another circuit of the aisles to move that blood clot a little further up my leg...

(click to enlarge)

9/11/06

Mornings are usually a noisy affair. The builders across the street seem to have their watches syncronised and as the little hand reaches eight a cacophony of hammer on steel begins - if they ever take the day off then I'll be late for work. This morning though there was an added commotion. For a good 5 minutes sirens wailed and fire trucks raced by, their foghorns blaring no doubt there was an emergency somewhere but today it was an eerie way to start the day. There were blanket blue skies outside and five years ago I hear the weather was much the same, I imagine the sounds were significantly louder and more sustained back then though.

For every generation there is a "where were you when..." moment. September 11, 2001 is ours. Personally I was on a 'late shift' at work in London. I had got to my desk at 1.45pm and switched on the TV to catch the CNN coverage just after the first plane had hit one of the World Trade Centers. It was a very long day after that and I guess the world hasn't been the same for any of us since.

I'm not usually one for mass compulsions but today I really did want to head down to the Trade Center Site to take a walk around and soak up the atmosphere. Obviously it was pretty chocker. The young, the old, tourists, families, those in uniform - everyone seemed to have adopted a gentle-paced amble around the narrow streets. Commemorative events could be found in many locations from a walk-in music recital in Trinity Church to a very quaint British Memorial hidden away in the backstreets for the 67 Britons killed in the attack; it began with a pipe band, was guested by Prince Andrew and Jack Straw and included an honour guard of 67 British police officers; there were performances from a brass band from the West Yorkshire Police, the choir from St. George's Chapel in Windsor Castle, and a Welsh soprano. It was a little bit of Britain in a skyscrapered corner of Manhattan - music and song echoing around the concrete amphitheatre; and it was just as comforting to see those same uniformed "bobbies" walking around the city later enjoying the sites before flying back home.

The WTC site itself was understandably less sedate. Thousands flowed past the enormous open space; flowers, poems, photographs, ribbons, flags - the fencing was adorned with memories. Probably the most striking though were the debates and mass demonstrations taking place. Quite simply they were split between those who believe that terrorists were behind 9/11 and those who don't. "An Inside Job" stated one banner, "Don't Believe The Lies" on another; a sea of black T-shirts emblazoned with "Investigate 9/11" massed behind a megaphoned speaker chanting and then marching off into the streets. The basic argument seemed to be that the buildings didn't fall as a result of the planes crashing into them but instead well placed explosives within the structures of many of the towers were the reason for their demise. There are some who believe that a plane never actually crashed into the Pentagon at all and that a missile was to blame for the devestation. Allegedly all this was part of a grand scheme by the government to declare war with selected regimes around the world.


Believe what you want. I thought Jay Leno summed the subject up well at the end of his chat show tonight, "Our government is not bright enough to carry out something like that..." Nevertheless, as the Tribute in Lights shines up into the sky this evening, the irony still lies in an event that so united a country in grief but very much divided it over their government's reaction.