A Flight Delayed
A flight delayed, then delayed again, inevitably leads to a spiraling helix of despair and bitterness. This situation starkly presents your total lack of power to get home independently and makes you feel worthless. We all know that we’re inconsequential in the eyes of an airline, but it feels so personal that your trip home is being so callously interrupted.
Last night, sitting in O’Hare flipping mindlessly through my email, this happened to me; a series of notifications apologizing for delays that pushed my arrival in Boston from 8pm to past midnight. I trekked what felt like a mile to another terminal, searching bitterly and listlessly for an earlier flight to get on stand-by, scurrying anonymously past bars and spas and newsstands, my shirt pooling with sweat beneath my overstuffed backpack.
I finally made it and looked up with empty rage upon the digital board that showed at least 10 people ahead of me on the list. I forced myself to wait for the other stand-by customers to be called, and wait in line to talk to the American Airlines agent, wanting to walk the fifteen minutes back to my gate with no question or doubt that this flight was totally full. After seating every other stand by customer, (while scanning her boarding pass the woman in front of me said to him disbelievingly “you’re changing my life”) agent told me that there was one seat left. But, he explained, he couldn’t sell it to me from his desk, that in the future I would have to buy a same-day ticket online at aa.com, but it was too late for that now as the doors were closing in one minute.
I stood limply in front of him, seething. Avoiding my eyes, he turned and shut the door to gateway.
On the way back to my original gate I ordered a Bigmac and 10 piece Mcnugget and ate them hatefully, my KN95 mask dangling from my ear as I choked down the food in the quiet hallway I sat in to avoid being unmasked near the massive crowds at the foodcourt.
When I got back to my original gate I saw a thin white woman in her sixties, with thin, almost wispy blond hair, and strong parallel lines tracking across her forehead. She wore an enormous, wide-brim white sun hat that protruded from her head like oversized plumage on an agitated bird. She was talking to the JetBlue agent, a South Asian man probably about my age, wearing glasses with black plastic frames, a short, black, well trimmed beard that, even while mostly covered by a yellow surgical mask, framed his face beautifully, and a sky blue uniform tucked in gently over his round stomach. The woman gesticulated animatedly— from a distance it looked like the kind of excited conversation you might have with an old friend who you are reuniting with after years. I arrived within earshot to overhear her hiss: “So you’re telling me it didn’t cross your mind that we already spent $200 on a hotel that we will not be getting back?”
“Let me see if I can look into getting you a JetBlue credit for the cost you are incurring there” replied the agent calmly, his fingers seeming disconnected from the rest of his body, dancing furiously over the keyboard of the built in gate monitor. Clicking her tongue loudly, the woman turned to her travel companion, a woman of similar age who stood a feet away. Her entire face expanded, staring at her partner she raised her eyebrows dramatically, which in turn pulled up her lids, revealing the whites of her eyes. The companion avoided meeting her gaze, mostly looking down, occasionally looking up and opening her mouth as if to interject, before looking away again.
Seeing the outburst totally disarmed my fury. It shifted to a pang of overwhelming softness for the agent and his dignified humility, as he calmly sympathized with the woman and talked her down from her peak of rage. I empathized with her drive to displace her despair—in a way this woman acted out a terrible fantasy of my own. The attempt to thrust the ugliest feelings within myself onto someone else. I felt glad I didn’t.
I stood, filled with an empty sense of awe, watching people in the terminal spilling past each other like ants in a mindless yet precise chaos. It struck me, amongst the randomness of this moment, how much my anger had been draining the life out of me.
“Hey, was there something I can help you with?” It was the JetBlue agent, who despite suffering a verbal assault had noticed from the corner of his eye that I’d been hovering near his desk. His tone was shocking—friendly, but not syrupy. It reminded me of the way that camp counselors greeted parents dropping off their kids for the summer—playing a role of service, yes, but meeting families’ nervous energy with an authentic and soothing enthusiasm for what was to come. Startled, I stumbled over my words, realizing I had no question, I had come simply to be witnessed, for someone to know how late I’d be getting home. I asked if he thought the flight might be delayed a fourth time and he smiled with his eyes. Leaning towards me conspiratorially, he said quietly “The aircraft is actually on the ground.” Then, raising his eyebrows “If we can get it de-planed quickly, it might even leave early.”
I thanked him awkwardly, too profusely, not knowing how to convey the profundity of my appreciation for his grace in a sea of mundanity. “This must be so stressful for you”, I finished. He just smiled, shrugged, and turned to talk to the next customer who stood, tapping his foot behind me.