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December 24, 2004

Flying (Observations On...)

It's no secret that I dislike flying.

Or, rather, I quite like flying, but I dislike the accumulated junk that surrounds flying. Particularly flying on busy days like, say, Christmas Eve.

Lou and Julia were nice enough to let me come down last night, then Lou was up at 4 AM (thanks again, Lou!) to drive me to the Providence airport for my 6 AM flight. Inside it was... well, it was a perfect example of unthinking design. Upon entry, I met up with a mass of people, none of whom knew where to go (it is, after all, 4:30 in the AM, so most are also 3/4ths asleep). Pushing through them, I found the self-check-in kiosk (no line, no waiting, no one pointing people toward it) and printed my boarding pass. Then I had to go to the "self serve" baggage check-in, which meant waiting in line for the people checking their entire belongings (no, I'm not exaggerating by much... 4 huge bags apiece and 5 people in the party) with the two overwhelmed assistants (who were actually doing the check-in, belying the "self serve" label). Then came the clever part... I had to pick up my just-tagged bag, push back through the milling crowd by the entrance to get to the far side of them and the TSA bag scanner. There, I watched my bag clumsily tossed around by the TSA folk until they picked it up and pushed it through a door in the wall. No notice what to do next, but I asked and they told me once my bag was done, I was to head to my gate. Fortunately, I'd been watching so I knew it already was; several other folk were milling about wondering what they should be doing. Of course, because this was the worst designed flow of traffic possible, heading to my gate meant pushing through the ever-increasing mass of people by the entry door yet again, this time to emerge in the right place to join the line to the security check-in and the gates.

No, of course the flow of people hadn't been really considered... it was enter, figure out where to go on your own, go back through the mass of people still befuddled by the first challenge to get bags scanned, then once again back through the same crowd to get to the gates. Normally, the goal is to keep things flowing all in one direction and decidedly not to have the expected path cross itself several times. But apparently that sort of consideration was not given.

Well... at least the plane seems to be leaving on time.

Posted by ghoul at December 24, 2004 05:21 AM

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