Ground Time and Touchy Neighbors

By Chris

I was in and out of Atlanta yesterday with early a.m. and late p.m. flights. Now, all the announcements refer to "Atlanta. The world's largest airport." Not sure if that's true, but it sure seems like it with the crazy problems one encounters there. Yesterday, I spent a total of 1.5 hours sitting in a plane, ON THE GROUND, at the world's largest airport. Apparently, it's not large enough. Landing there yesterday morning on time will give Delta credit for an on-time arrival. But, because there was no gate available to park the plane at, we sat . . . and sat . . . and sat. So, it really does no good to get there on time if you can't get off the plane. And I was ready to get off. Sitting next to me was someone holding one of the dreaded "infant in arms" tickets. That means you buy one ticket for you and your baby. I think there is an age limit, and this child had to be real close to it. She was very cute. And very loud. And very much potty training. She and mommy were at the window, I was on the aisle in a small jet with two seats on each side. Every once in a while, they needed to get up, try the potty thing, requiring me to stand, close my computer, stand hunched, sit back down, repeat again . . . you get the picture. They had to stay by the window, because the window worked off-and-on as a distraction to quiet the intermittent crying. Sometimes, the child would fall asleep for a few minutes, stretch out and grab my arm. The poor mom was very embarrassed . . . I told her it was no problem, I have plenty of knucklehead resistance built up. But, you could tell she just wanted out of this situation. Then, the runway wait. It was a connecting flight, so she still had one more leg to go. I bet she buys her a seat next time.

The return trip . . . we get on the plane on time at one of those gates where 4 or 5 small planes are parked outside and you walk outside and climb the steps onto the plane. I should have known there was trouble when the gate sign listed two flights, going two different places leaving one minute apart at the same gate. Peoria and Newport News. It was a loud confusing mess outside. We were next to a gate where they were parking planes with two huge propellers so close we could feel the wind they produced and could barely hear anything. The helpful people outside got the planes mixed up, sending the Peoria passengers to the NN plane, and vice versa. Back and forth we went, ground people and plane people contradicting each other. Even so, we were all seated in time to leave on time (I'm betting some luggage got on some wrong planes though). Again, stuck on the ground at the world's largest airport, this time because of planes parked behind us preventing them from pushing our plane back. Poor ground crew. Having a bad day, I guess. "Hey, let's park the planes that leave first behind the planes that leave last and tell people to get on the wrong planes." All part of being the world's largest airport, I guess. No baby this time, but a tired man who kept falling asleep and putting his hands subconciously on me. Sort of awkward. I kept pushing him back in his space, which would cause him to wake up, startled, look around confused, quickly fall back asleep, touch me . . . over and over. Got home very late. When I left, everyone was asleep, when I got home, everyone was asleep.