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Sunday, Jul 12, 2009
In times of terror alert, international travel turns into an endurance marathon -- and a financial train wreck.
Jan 6, 2004 | On Sunday, Jan. 4, the check-in counter for Aeromexico Airlines in the Mexico City International Airport opened at 4:30 a.m., fully four and a half hours before a 9 a.m. flight to Los Angeles was scheduled to take off. For even extremely cautious travelers, four-plus hours might seem like adequate time to pick up a boarding pass and get one's bags checked.
But to the people who had missed their flights the day before at that same airport, four and a half hours seemed to be cutting it dangerously close. Over this past weekend, heightened security measures resulting from U.S. Transportation Security Administration alerts about a particular Aeromexico flight led to what may have been the most extreme security measures ever carried out at the Mexico City International Airport. I know, because I was there, and after waiting seven hours in line on Jan. 3, and missing two flights to Los Angeles, I wasn't going to take any chances. I was in line at 3:30 in the morning.
Or, to be more precise, I was in line to get in line, because airline personnel had blocked off the main check-in area and were admitting travelers through the barricades in dribs and drabs. And already, at 3:30 in the morning, the lines to get in line were 30 to 40 people long, and getting longer at what seemed like a geometrically expanding rate. By 6 a.m., when I did end up actually getting a boarding pass (after having had all my luggage hand-inspected for the third time in 24 hours), multiple lines to get in line stretched awesomely across the airport's concourse, summoning up images from the evacuation of Saigon or scenes from "The Year of Living Dangerously." Those who had arrived, say, a mere two hours before their flight was due to take off were in for a rude awakening.
And checking one's bags in was just the first step. Then there were the lines to get through security, and then the lines to get on the plane itself. Lines to get in lines to get in lines to get in lines. Even at the best of times, there's a certain Borgesian labyrinth feel to Mexico City International. On this particular weekend, Borges was channeling Kafka.
The proximate cause of the chaos was the cancellation of two Aeromexico flights to Los Angeles (and the turning back of a third, and the fighter-jet escorting, reportedly, of a fourth) earlier in the week. The decision to hand-inspect every piece of luggage -- and conduct rigorous security checks of passengers just prior to boarding -- resulted in a cascade of missed flights, missed connections, overbooked airplanes and bumped passengers. On the morning of Jan. 4, passengers and airline personnel alike stumbled around with looks of exhaustion and despair. As a passenger, all one had to do was mention the words "Los Angeles" and everyone around you shied away in horror (even more than they usually do).
If we take on faith that the TSA had reasonably good reasons for targeting Aeromexico Flight 490 as a legitimate al-Qaida terrorist risk, then of course no amount of security is too much, and a missed flight here or there is little price to pay for averting thousands of deaths. I have no quarrel with that. But if scenes like last weekend's keep recurring, the consequences for airlines and the travel industry in general will be dire.
I like to travel. But I'm not looking forward to a future in which I need to get to the airport five hours ahead of departure to be sure I won't miss a flight, one in which I'm patted down from head to toe several times every time I try to board a plane, one in which I am constantly explaining every item in my luggage and every twist in my itinerary to hostile agents. I've had the chance to think about airline security a great deal over the past few days, and I'll tell you this: After being asked by one security guard to drink from a water bottle in my carry-on to prove that it wasn't acid or poison; after being interrogated by a U.S. customs agent who was suspicious at the number of books I had in my luggage; after the long lines, the hand inspections, the X-ray screenings, the near riots by enraged passengers, the uncertainty and the anxiety -- after all that, traveling to a foreign land, or even just across the state of California, doesn't seem quite so exotic or alluring anymore.
If I were the CEO of an airline, I'd be worried.
