The US-bound odyssey I have just endured has hammered home the realisation that for all my paranoia, a lifetime of fairly uneventful flights had lulled me into complacency, leaving me completely unprepared for the worst air travel could, and did, throw at me. (Barring fatal accidents. Of course.)
At Changi, I found to my dismay that my flight had been brought forward by 45 minutes, leaving me less time than I had counted on for check-in and goodbyes. Check-in brought another unpleasant surprise: I had excess weight in one of my bags, and had no choice but to repack, shifting the heaviest items from the overweight bag to the lighter one, discarding things that wouldn't fit. I managed to accomplish this in 10 frantic minutes of going wild with anxiety, shifting through a mess of personal paraphernalia next to the airline counters. I managed to bloody my fingers too, which isn't too surprising considering their default state (i.e. hopelessly damaged). After all that fuss I had to rush to the boarding gate before Xuwen could come to see me off. All in all, the Changi experience sucked.
But at Tokyo-Narita, everything went to the dogs. My connecting flight got delayed by snow that wasn't even anywhere near blizzard proportions. We just sat in the plane as it prepared for a take-off that never came. For one thing, the wings had to be de-iced, and that took some time becase Narita was woefully unprepared for snow (apparently, according to a Japanese lady I talked to, this sort of thing only happens a couple of times every winter... the east coast of Japan doesn't see a lot of snow) and had insufficient resources to cope (according to passenger rumour, only 1 de-icing truck was available). Then when the wings were finally de-iced, the runway wasn't available, so we had to wait until snow accumulated on the wings and they had to be de-iced again. And so this went on for about 5 taxing hours. I slept through most of it, because the crowded, cramped and hot cabin wasn't fit for consciousness. Finally, just when the plane was ready for take-off, Northwest ordered it to return to the gate. The entire airport was shut down, all flights were cancelled, and I became one of many disgruntled passengers stranded at Narita, which wasn't even a very pleasant place to be stranded in. The scant few restaurants and cafes were swamped by hungry passengers, there was only 1 small bookshop and which didn't provide much in the way of decent English reading material (only airport literature of the finest sort... I noted some S&M books with very suggestive covers), and I wasn't remotely interested in shopping for cosmetics or perfume or tidbits.
What annoyed me most was the incompetence and inefficiency of the airport personnel, who seemed just as lost and confused as the hordes of angry passengers were. Their lack of English proficiency didn't help either, hampering their ability to communicate vital information and reassure passengers. Two extremely aggrieved and aggressive Singaporeans confronted the Northwest counter staff, demanding immediate provisions for a flight to Singapore first thing in the morning. One of them, a bellicose middle-aged man, was practically yelling, for all to hear, that he had traveled all the way from the US to attend a funeral and the last thing he wanted was to miss it. An American insisted on speaking with airport superiors, and things got tense when the Japanese Northwest agent failed to satisfy his demands.
I think the eventual presence of airport policemen at my original flight's gate was very telling. Tempers were becoming dangerously frayed, disgruntlement was degenerating into barely concealed hostility - shouting, fist-banging and sarcastic insults accompanied by threats. There was an American passenger capturing all the drama on his digital camcorder. 'That's right, get the news! Get the news!' someone cheered. Frustrated, vocal people took every opportunity to hassle and belittle the staff.
I would have felt sorry for the harried, overworked Northwest counter staff, if I wasn't plenty pissed myself about being kept waiting for hours, on a empty stomach and negligible sleep, half bored to death and extremely upset at the enforced time-wasting. I don't mind wasting time, as long as I'm doing it of my own free will and it is being carried out on my own terms, but I don't like other people wasting my time. Especially on mind-numbing activities like standing endlessly in line, listening to the staff repeat unproductive things like 'I don't know' or 'I'm sorry, but we have no idea at the moment', in between confusing paying customers with contradictory, incomplete, or otherwise useless information.
I spent the night at Narita with a Japanese lady called Sayuri and another middle-aged Japanese lady, exchanging small talk (some of it in Japanese) and sharing food... before they ran off to grab limited seats on an early flight (which they claimed were 'reserved' for women. I went, 'HUH?'). I couldn't understand what the fuss was about at first (because the other lady was babbling in Japanese, most of which I couldn't catch), so I was slow in packing up my things, lost them and was effectively abandoned. Left alone to fend for myself in the messy aftermath of massive flight cancellations, to jostle for the precious few boarding passes with hundreds of equally (if not even more) desperate stranded passengers. What made the experience especially irritating was all the Japanese being spoken around me. Usually that wouldn't have been an issue - in fact I rather enjoy listening to Japanese chatter even when I don't understand it, but this time round, my foul mood and the inanely chirpy nature of the language didn't mesh well at all.
But by some miracle I landed myself boarding passes for a flight to Portland - Minneapolis - Providence, departing on 22 Jan, which was bloody fortunate because the flights on that day were all overbooked and many passengers ended up stranded for a consecutive day.
However, my Portland flight was delayed for about 3 hours, so I missed the connecting flight to Minneapolis. To my great relief, the Northwest staff in the US were considerably more efficient than their Japanese counterparts, managing to re-route me to United Airlines flights from Portland to Chicago and then from Chicago to Providence. It was a roundabout way of getting to my destination, but at least it got me where I wanted.
No such luck for my luggage, though. Yet again, Northwest has screwed that up.
I really have no luck with air travel, do I?
words were spilled on Monday, January 23, 2006
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