The airport is a hell of a place. When I fly, I spend hours observing my fellow travelers. Each airport denizen is forced to navigate a modern Collosseum in order to be free. While not specifically optimized to stress people out, I imagine someone purposefully trying to stress people out would have come up with something similar. It doesn’t help that the average traveler has a high baseline of anxiety.
A Trip to the Airport
The airport frenzy begins immediately upon arrival. The majority of passengers arrive by bus or car. As soon as they are within a 10 meter radius of an airport door, they are quickly shepherded out of their vehicle. When there isn’t room to pull over, cars will stop in the middle of the road to offload the cattle. Policemen chase cars that have been stopped too long with impatient hand gestures and the occasional chiding via loudspeaker.
All passengers are ushered into the airport by confusing signage. They must make it passed the conveyor belt baggage claims and the airline-specific check-in counters1 to the security line.
The security line is the most awe-inspiring part of the airport. American class divisions project onto the various lines: Clear for the elite, TSA-pre for the upper middle class, and the regular line for the proles. One thing that unites the classes is the participation in the TSA’s security theatre. While only the proles are subjected to the humiliation of taking their shoes off, everyone goes through the metal detector and the occasional full-body scan. Everyone is also subject to random screenings and the confiscation of threatening materials like toothpaste or demonic entities (e.g. nail files, pocket knives). The Kafkaesque TSA rules, which sometimes vary between lines at a single airport, do not discriminate; they torment people from all walks of life.
Indeed, the security line can be an odyssey, but such a ritual is necessary to signify the transformation that takes place as you pass through. The security screening is a gateway to lawlessness and the abandonment of the few remaining norms of polite society. Americans de-evolve from homo sapien to airport creature and the security line is the coronation.
The Airport Creature
You have made it through security and you are nearing your gate. Phew. You won’t have to subject yourself to any more pat downs or cavity searches, but you may have a long journey to your gate. While each airport’s layout varies, I will describe the prototypical terminal: Denver International Airport.
A shuttle drops you off at the center of the terminal. Here you find something akin to a mall food court. There’s fast food, which usually has the longest lines. There are also premium restaurants and some retail stores. As a general rule of thumb, everything sold has at least a 50% mark-up. The crowd at the restaurant bar at 8 am is larger than you would expect; in fact, you might be hard-pressed to find a seat. An older man sips a glass of white wine as he enjoys what appears to be a Western omelette. This is the first rule among airport creatures; there is none of the typically pervasive puritanical shame about alcohol. Boozing is authorized at anytime of day, so long as there’s an open restaurant. At the same time, you never really see people overindulge. It’s not exactly a frat party or a NASCAR race; I think it’s too sad of an atmosphere to drink that much. Or too expensive.
You walk past the food court assuming you’re able to resist the siren song of a $15 turkey sandwich with a $6 water. You feel something brush passed you, it’s a band of small children playing tag with no guardian in sight. At the first stretch of gates, you’ll see well-to-do adults sprawled all over the place pursuing comfort without any concern for dignity or personal appearance. Renovated airports use permanent, fixed arm rests to discourage people from occupying multiple seats; the same technique has proved effective in keeping the homeless from sleeping on park benches. Fortunately, there’s a simple workaround: just improvise a pillow from your backpack or jacket and lay down on the floor. I choose to believe people sleeping on the floor are in a similar predicament to Tom Hanks in Terminal and have been at the airport for weeks because they cannot return to their war-torn country. In reality, the only justification for sleeping on the floor is that you are tired. Again, none of the typical anti-homeless scorn comes from those around you should you choose to sleep on the floor; airport creature is liberated.
The airport creature is incapable of shame. He may dress slovenly wearing ill-fitting dirty sweatpants or pajamas. She takes her shoes off and even her socks! One must air their puppies out. Without God fluids in quantities greater than 8 ounces, everything is permitted.
The most despicable characteristic of the airport creature is his dehumanization of the airline employees, who have an immunity to the unfortunate side effects of the airport. Airport creature has contempt for the more evolutionarily advanced airline employee, but without any clubs or rocks to beat the airline employee over the head with, airport creature’s only weapon is unthinkable disrespect. Some common conversation themes include, but are not limited to: complaining about things costing money, complaining about delays, accusing the airline of being a cabal that intentionally creates delays to sabotage travel plans, accusing the airline of being indifferent to human suffering, and accusing the airline of perpetrating world hunger.
What happens in the TSA security line that does this to us? Does the Rapiscan remove our soul? Does it radiate and thereby activate cells from a more primitive ancestor? Does it spawn a tumor in the pre-frontal lobe? I know the answer and its not so exciting. Traveling people are strung out. People primarily travel for work, vacation, or to see family. When traveling for work, you are already primed with stress. A delay could cause a missed meeting or otherwise interfere with your ability to make a living. When traveling for vacation or to see family, it’s high-stakes. You’re spending significant amounts of money and you want to maximize your time at the destination. These factors, combined with people’s unfamiliarity with flying, creates an environment where almost everyone is on edge.
How did we design these airports, knowing they’d be holding pens for the anxious and weary? Well, we made them horrible. From the drop-off line to the security line to the gate seating arrangements, it is fundamentally uncomfortable. This brings me back to my Colosseum point: I think there really is a cabal that interferes with travel plans.2 While the stakes are admittedly lower, our modern gladiators (those seeking to fly from point a to b) share a desperation with the ancient gladiators (those fighting for their life/freedom). Just as the gladiators had lions that would be elevated into the arena or floods that would descend upon them orchestrated by the emperor and his crew, some bastard sends a TSA agent or a lost piece of luggage or a cancelled flight to see how we react. And how do we react? We sleep on the floor, drink alcohol for breakfast, and go full airport creature.