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There are worse things than being 5 hours early
© St. Petersburg Times A year ago I was reviled, persecuted and spitefully used by my fiancee (now my wife) and a friend of ours who thought I was overcautious about getting to the airport on time. They thought five hours was too early. From what I hear, that is a less unrealistic figure today during peak travel times, although all of my regularly flying friends tell me 90 minutes for a domestic flight usually is adequate. It's the "usually," that bothers me. If it turns out to be inadequate, it means you spend anywhere from several hours to a day or two sitting in an airport while your car rental and hotel reservations go up in smoke. In a little less than two weeks I will be taking my first flight since the disaster of Sept. 11. While I am not paralyzed with fear by recollections of the horrible events of that day, I firmly believe that none of us will ever get on a plane again without at least a passing memory and some degree of uneasiness. But I fear the increased preboarding hassle as much as I do anything else, and I know there are some differences there. I developed my early airport arrival habit back in the 1960s, when I was flying military standby everywhere I went. You got a good deal on a ticket, usually all you could afford, but it meant that you had to wait for a flight with open seating on it. Then the seats were distributed on a first-come, first-served basis, except that officers could bump you. I spent two days waiting in the airport at Atlanta on my way to Vietnam, went and spent a day and a half with relatives and returned to spend another seven hours waiting for a flight -- all of it in a heavy, wool uniform. The payoff was that I did get a seat in first class from Atlanta to San Francisco and, after I helped break up a fight between two old men (they were probably in their 40s, but they looked old then) arguing about whether the guy in front had the right to recline his seat during meal service -- I got really good drink service for the entire flight. The need to be first in line never left me. What if, I always reasoned, I blew a tire on the way to the airport? What if one of the standard interminable traffic tieups on Interstate 275 kept me waiting and fuming for two hours? What if I couldn't find a parking space? I began arriving at the airport earlier and earlier and, when I could finally afford it, began going to the Tampa International Airport the day before a flight and spending the night at the Airport Marriott, starting my trips with a swim, a margarita or three and a leisurely dinner at CK's restaurant. It was also nice having a bellman take our bags down to check in. On last year's trip from Orlando to Denver, one member of our party didn't want to spend the night at the hotel, so I agreed to same-day driving, only if we could leave seven hours early. I had spent too many hours on Interstate 4 waiting for an accident to be cleared or a brush fire to be extinguished to trust the highway to get me there on time. Naturally, there were no glitches; we spent five hours sitting in the airport (which doesn't bother me because I always take a book) and, because I got us lost on the way from Denver to our destination, I am still the constant butt of cruel jokes about my obsession with punctuality. I also used to fly first class a lot, back in the days when it was only a few bucks more, arguing that first class was less likely to be overbooked than coach and that, because the airline I usually fly preboards first class, I subscribed to the theory that it is harder to get someone off an airplane (they offer all kinds of neat bribes) than it is to keep them from getting on. But when I checked modes of transportation for a vacation later this year, I found that first class cost nearly three times as much as coach, and first class train travel cost roughly 10 times as much. It was a depressing day at the travel agent's office (and, yes, I still use a live travel agent, so I can have someone to yell at if things get screwed up). No first class rail, no first class air. So I asked for a concierge level room at the airport hotel. "Want me to check rates?" my travel agent asked. "No," I responded. I want to do something first class this year. Even if it takes two years to pay for it.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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Times columns today Jan Glidewell Gary Shelton Elijah Gosier From the Times North Suncoast desks |
