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Cattle Call at the Airport
The Travel Critic · July 12, 1999

Is it my imagination, or are airport waiting areas degenerating from passenger purgatories into outright hellholes?

Like I have to ask.

"Think of it as being in an elevator that never gets to your floor," says Eric Anderson, a computer consultant from San Diego, Calif. "The seating is uncomfortable. The view is boring."

It's often no better from the other side of the ticket counter. John Steiner, an acting gate supervisor in Phoenix, says waiting areas "tend to be too loud, especially at hub airports. The announcements overload travelers and they cannot pick out the information they need to know from that information that is intended for others. So oftentimes nobody hears anything."

The terminals aren't any more crowded than usual, and the seats aren't any less comfortable, as far as I can tell. Rather, the torture is in the duration of the wait and in the glaring contrast between haves and have nots.

United Airlines in April began closing gate doors five minutes before its flights are scheduled to leave, a step designed to help improve on-time departure performance. If the five-minute rule does what it's supposed to, then other airlines may have no choice but to follow suit.

Meanwhile, airlines are offering fewer advance seat assignments at the time of ticket sales, so passengers are showing up earlier to avoid getting stuck in a middle seat in the back of the plane.

And so they end up sitting in the terminal even longer.

Maybe that's one reason airlines seem more anxious than ever to separate the cattle from the premium passengers. American Airlines, for example, recently announced that it is building a new lounge for international first-class passengers at O'Hare International Airport. The 4,000-square-foot Flagship Lounge will feature its very own smoking lounge, among other amenities.

Although I'm sure American doesn't see this project as an acknowledgement of how awful the common waiting areas are, I would beg to differ. It knows that gate areas are a veritable circus of screaming infants, nervous first-timers, salesmen yelling into their cell phones, and tour groups that don't speak a word of English.

The soundtrack to this show comes to us courtesy of the CNN Airport Network, interrupted only by boarding announcements that, as Steiner points out, no one can understand anyway.

Try escaping the chaos and you step into a busy corridor where, oddly enough, the airport buggies have the right of way. If the golf carts don't get you then you'll probably get knocked down by a passenger who is running to catch his flight or by someone who is so engrossed in his phone conversation that he didn't bother noticing you.

I'll give the architects credit for trying to help the common passenger. At Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport's new terminal, they tried to improve waiting conditions by adding more room and decorating the terminals with art.

But merchants are upset about the new digs because travelers tend to skip their shops, which are outside the security areas. Unfortunately, I don't think the next airport terminal will make the same mistake, so we'll be left to wander once again among the cramped and overpriced airport boutiques.

Then again, who are we to complain? Which of us paid the full fare for an unrestricted ticket? The airports and their tenants know that we're getting exactly what we paid for - which is usually not much.

Christopher Elliott is a travel commentator and author of A Bridge to Nowhere: A Year in the Florida Keys. All e-mailed questions may be edited, condensed or republished at the site's discretion.