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September 12, 2003
Airport insecurityI took another flight over Labor Day weekend out of McCarran International Airport. A friend of mine said he parks in the parking lot of a casino near the airport to save himself the parking fees. That worked out fine until the owners decided to repave the parking lot while he was gone and towed his car away. It used to be, I'd park in the oversized parking, in the open air, where it was $6 per day. After McCarran hiked parking fees last year that area is even more expensive, at $12 per day, than the regular parking garage, which went up from $8 to $10. One time, on a busy weekend, I got one of the last parking spots in the regular parking garage, driving around frantically until I was on the roof. If I want to save a few bucks now, I'll park at terminal two. Motorists there have to punch in their parking space in a machine and deposit the money, $8 per day. The machine spits out those new Sacagawea dollar coins as change, useful for somebody trying to impress the checkout girl at the supermarket. Sometimes the cost of parking amounts to half the price of the plane ticket. My flight over Labor Day was a fairly quick check-in. On my previous trip through McCarran on a holiday weekend, a rude Asian woman at the check-in line berated me because I didn't hear her call my flight, allowing me to skip the long queue at the check-in counter, because I had to board my flight quickly, even though it was still two hours before departure time! Long lines at the check-in counter make me want to avoid those airlines. It used to be, it was possible to obtain a boarding pass in advance and go straight to the gate. I remember an occasion, before all the security regulations were in place, running onto an airplane parked at San Francisco International Airport and asking the stewardess on the way by to hold the door for my friend, who came running around the corner with his bags a couple minutes later. On this most recent flight the airline attendant didn't ask me the two questions: Did you pack your own luggage, and was your luggage ever out of your sight? I don't think any self-respecting terrorist is going to answer no and yes, respectively. Everyone is going to get searched to the nth degree anyway, so those questions seemed pointless. I usually don't have to take off my footwear to go through the metal detector if I'm wearing sandals, but sometimes they even ask me to take them off. That must be the most thankless job, working that part of the inspection process. My last flight however, I almost had to do a public striptease; the metal detectors at McCarran seem tuned to the same super-sensitive level as the handheld scanner used in the secondary inspection, which was still beeping even after I removed my belt and my wallet. On long, cross-country flights I take along the headphones from my Walkman, which fit into the jack for listening to the movie, saving me the $5 headphone charge. I often pack a half-pint of Bacardi to mix clandestinely with the complimentary sodas (the stewardess must wonder, though, why this passenger orders so many Cokes?) Over my Labor Day flight, a couple of guys from Odessa, Texas, struck up an interesting discussion with a woman from Albuquerque in the row behind me. She eventually gave them her phone number, while I was stuck, as usual, sitting next to a zero conversationalist immersed in a book. I read the in-flight magazine and, out of desperation, the Sky Mall shopping guide. It always contains items you never need at prices you could never afford. I've never quite understood why everyone stands up in the aisles as soon as the plane arrives at the gate. It always takes 10 or 15 minutes for the doors to open. Then passengers are left waiting for people to retrieve their bags from the overhead compartments or getting stampeded by passengers behind them trying to get out. I usually wait until everyone disembarks and walk off with the stewardesses a few minutes later. I also usually try to carry my bags on board so my they don't end up in a faraway city. It also makes it handy when I have to dash for a connecting flight, when no baggage handler could possibly throw my luggage on the rack in time. Airports always seemed like cities in themselves. At least McCarran is centrally located for Las Vegas; some airports, like the new Denver International, are so far out of town they're practically in another time zone. McCarran had been fairly compact, but now it's one of those "airport cities" where passengers have to ride shuttles to the gates. Probably the worst airport, though, is Dallas-Fort Worth; I had an hour to catch a connecting flight at DFW once and I almost missed it because it was clear across the airport. The drive to Las Vegas and the long arrival times required at the airport before departure almost make it more worthwhile to simply drive to a place like San Diego. Perhaps in a few years they'll build that fast, magnetic levitation train from Las Vegas to Anaheim. Maybe they'll even have a stop in Baker, Calif., for us Pahrump passengers. I understand the days of informal airport travel are over on this second anniversary of 9/11, and with our request for cheap airfares driving most airlines into bankruptcy, we can't expect airline travel to be luxurious like it used to be. But I haven't completely given up on the friendly skies. It's still a special occasion for me to get up above the ground and see those lights of the Strip below. Write to Mark Waite at mwaite@pvtimes.com. |
