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Monday, Nov 9, 2009
The new Logan airport: No JFK, but still testament to a time when every terminal was its own kingdom.
Jun 18, 2004 | Everyone knows about the Big Dig, Boston's overdue and overbudget highway megaproject, but one of the Dig's less-publicized side jobs has been a massive modernization of Logan International Airport. This past Saturday, anxious to see how Logan has changed, I took an end-to-end ramble across the airport's terminal cluster.
The walk was part business, part reminiscence. Two and a half decades ago, in my postadolescent plane-spotting days, Logan was a second home. My friends and I had come to know Logan's passageways, concourses and stairwells with an almost effortless familiarity -- our hands reaching for elevator buttons, doorknobs and turnstiles with the same physical-memory intimacy used for flipping on the bathroom light at 3 a.m. And so I embarked with equal measures of wistful nostalgia and the melancholy of encroaching middle-age (damn 38th birthday just past). Would I recognize the place?
One thing I was happy not to recognize was Logan's gleaming new subway station, finally completed this spring. Here, as in virtually all other U.S. airports, public transit access remains a far cry from what you'll find in Western Europe or certain cities in Asia, where in-terminal trains whisk you into the city in minutes, but the new facility is more than welcome by those of us who remember just how frighteningly decrepit the old one was.
I'm pleased to report that during my five-terminal sweep, despite being ticketless, luggageless, and wielding both notebook and camera, not once was I stopped, questioned or asked to present identification. Random I.D. checks are now a sanctioned policy of the Massachusetts State Police, the jackbooted overseers of Logan's well-being, but the property seemed no more uptight than when my pals and I used to sneak behind the ticketing stands to pilfer whatever stickers, stationery and souvenirs we could get our hands on. At least on the surface, it was free of that Iron Curtain-style oppression that was running rampant in the days after Sept. 11.
Logan received a black eye -- or, more appropriately, two black eyes -- after American's flight 11 and United's flight 175 departed here within minutes of each other that sun-splashed Tuesday morning (my own takeoff sandwiched between them), destined for the north and south World Trade Center towers, respectively. Much was made of the fact that 10 of the 19 hijackers ambled through metal detectors in terminal's B and C with an arsenal of sharps. It was a scapegoating of the worst order, but the perception of Logan as a place of porous, incompetent security became unshakable. Raphael "Rafi" Ron, retired security czar of Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International, was brought in to scrutinize and overhaul staff and procedures.
Within a year, Logan's landlord, the Massachusetts Port Authority (Massport), was championing Ron's accomplishments in a hail of public statements that sounded as if they were coming from Radio Pyongyang:
"Logan International Airport is the first airport in nation to enhance security with an innovative behavior pattern recognition program ... has trained members of the Massachusetts State Police to identify hostile intent by observing and interviewing passengers and others in the airport's terminals, curbs, roads, and parking garages ... troopers will observe passengers and watch for irregular behavior or conduct."
Bring the kids too, and don't miss the food court.
Who's to say some hidden camera wasn't craning its electronic neck, plotting and tracking my route while men in a sub-basement nervously eyed their monitors, but all was blissfully quiet for my Saturday meander. I strolled to my heart's content, stopping to photograph the sea-life tile mosaics built into the floors of the newly finished Central Garage walkways: fish, skates, crabs, even a life-size giant squid laid out in elegant (well, some of them) detail. I had to chuckle. Those who've seen the ancient floor mosaics of North Africa, Turkey and elsewhere will recognize this unintentional 21st century tribute to the Romans.
Atop the Central Garage, I sneak a few frames of the control tower, its concrete legs buttered yellow by the June sunset. I put away my camera and hold my breath, figuring I'm about to be wrestled to the ground by a phalanx of truncheon-wielding state troopers. But the only squawk I encounter is the mournful drone of a herring gull.
