Thursday, 06/20/2002 Entry: "Security? What Security?"

But let me tell you about her trip here...

Imagine driving 90 minutes to the airport, taking a dinky plane to a major city, then catching a regular plane to NYC. That's bad enough, right? Well, apparently it wasn't.

Last Friday, there were storms all over the USA. In Florida's inner peninsula something hit, in Chicago they were plagued, and ours was just finishing off. EVen weatherchannel.com was shut down save a page of text and some gifs (the first time in years their stupid site loaded within a reasonable amount of time).

The original game plan was she would arrive at about 7pm, we'd bring her stuff home, then walk to a nearby Columbian restaurant for some pollo al carbon. HAH!!! In a perfect world.

Her plane was delayed. First because the planes were stacked in Chicago while they took off and landed between storm clouds. Then, the airline's website said "Operator problems." She called. They were going to be reticketed for another plane. Okay. Then it took off 90 min late. And missed the connection in Chicago which was 37 minutes late. Standing in line to be reticketed prevented her from catching the flight scheduled for the next hour, so she was to be here by 9pm. Yeah right.

She called again (she figured I would have gone right home after work instead of to La Guardia) and I watched the doppler on accuweather.com, where there was a clear break over Chicago as we spoke. She confirmed the sun was coming into the Windows at O'Hare. The plane was scheduled to arrive 9:30. It left on time at 7:45 and I left to arrive at the terminal by bus at 9pm.

Let me tell you something. There was NO security at the airport. NONE NADA ZIP ZILCH. Did they think just letting cabs and buses up to the building was going to make a difference? I could have walked in with explosives strapped all over me and firecrackers coming out of each ear, and nobody would have noticed! I mean it! No metal detectors, no guards standing at each door, no requests for ID... NOTHING!!! Living downwind of LGA, this does not make me feel very secure. Anyway, that sort of pissed me off.

The other thing which pissed me off was the fact that there was ONE monitor in all the terminal which displayed the United flights. I located it by 9:15 and involuntarily blurted "WHAT??!" at seeing the flight was now to arrive at 10:48pm. I had seen some green specs converging on the Wisconsin-Illinois border earlier, but thought she'd have been able to take off before they reached Chicago.

Apparently so did others. I compared notes and learned most everyone else hanging around with me had seen the report of the plane being "In Flight" from their web browser, then left their homes to pick their friends and family up. We all waited. I wrote a beginner's guide to navigating Manhattan in a travel journal I planned to give her (I'm a total blank book fiend).

Well, at 10:30 I checked. 11:12pm. The amusing thing was that the flight which was to have landed an hour before was set for 11:16pm. No, I'm not kidding.

Come 11pm, everyone stopped what they were doing and converged towards the "passengers only beyond this point" area. A flight of people came out: another line from Chicago. 11:10 spilled forth a Tampa flight in the same predicament. Then, the two United Chicago flights. With the mass of people coming out and the limited view we were allowed, it's a wonder I saw her. And although hers was one of the first suitcases down the ramp, the line to get a taxi was huge.

We arrived home at midnight. She was too tired to eat (I had eaten before leaving), and reported that for the 4+ hour flight they were not only given a cookie, but made to smell the dinners being served in first class. What fucking rude torture. Remind me never to take United...