In Defense of Airports

A modest rejoinder to J. B. Priestley

Midway Airport postcard by Curt Teich. Public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Many people claim to dislike flying. I am not among them. I quite enjoy it. Or rather, I enjoy long flights—the very ones people often say they hate. I have little use for a short, fifty-minute flight where you land almost before you’ve taken off, hardly have a chance to shut your eyes or open your book, and the flight attendants pretend they haven’t even the time to bring you some peanuts and a glass of water. A flight like that isn’t worth the effort.

Even a three- or four-hour flight across a couple of time zones in the USA doesn’t quite do the trick. A six-hour jaunt from somewhere on the East coast over to London is better, but it too seems to end almost before it’s begun. What I really like is one of those eight- or nine-hour flights between, say, Detroit or Chicago and somewhere in Central Europe—Frankfurt, Zurich, Vienna. Preferably the return flight home, which turns into a long, extended day, as opposed to an overnight flight Europewards, during which one feels a certain duty to close one’s eyes and attempt to sleep at least for a couple of hours.

But a long flight back home is great. They feed me—not especially well, but airline food has come a long way—and keep me supplied with snacks and drinks. I can take a nap whenever I like—and generally do, maybe even more than once—without needing to feel in the least guilty about it. I do not use the “in-flight entertainment system,” except to turn on the flight map, which I let run so that I can keep track of the time and see where we are. But all those movies and games and… well, I guess I don’t really know “and what,” because I don’t actually have any idea what all might or might not be there, but whatever it is, it’s wasted on me. I don’t understand those folks who fritter away an entire flight by watching three mediocre movies.

Me, I read a book. Often an entire book, because a long flight is enough time to knock one out. Even allowing a few hours for the requisite eating and napping, I can typically finish off a novel, or perhaps a history of whatever region I’ve just visited. When, except on one of these long flights, do I ever get five or six uninterrupted hours available for reading? Hours when I really can’t do anything else anyway? Never.

One more blissful feature of these flights, hinted at by that “uninterrupted,” makes them such a pleasure: nobody bothers me. There are no phone calls. No students or colleagues knock on my door. I get no e-mails. (I also do not pay extra for in-flight wifi, a service that should really be provided for free.) I can ignore the rest of the world, and no one can complain. For as long as we’re in the air, it’s just me and my book. What’s not to like?

But now that I am in a confessional mood here at “From My Bookshelf,” I have an even more startling admission to make. It’s not just flying that I like. I also like airports.

I feel obliged to come the defense of airports because I have just been reading J. B. Priestley’s short essay—a mere four pages in the charmingly titled Grumbling At Large, a lovely little volume from the good folks at Notting Hill editions—“About Hating Airports.” Provoked, I shall take up the gauntlet that J. B. has thrown down.

J. B. Priestley at work in his study. National Media Museum, UK, no copyright restrictions. Via Wikimedia Commons.

Priestley’s target is “large airports in terms of waiting in them”—precisely the experience I enjoy. He and I wait in them for the same reason: “I am always nervous and apprehensive,” he writes, “about missing the plane or train, so that I always insist upon arriving early, dreading any last-minute rush.” So far, I am with him. The two of us, to this extent, are birds of feather. I have heard rumors that some people carefully plan their travel so as to avoid spending any unnecessary minute in the airport. They are lost souls. I dislike being rushed in general, and I especially dislike it while traveling. I do not go to the airport for a workout, hoping to break a sweat while rushing through it like the late, not terribly lamented O. J. Simpson in a Hertz commercial.

What I want is to enjoy the leisurely experience “of waiting” in the airport. To be sure, airports have their drawbacks. Excessive security protocols, for instance, silly rules about shoes and liquids and the supposedly “random selection,” in defiance of all common sense, of various people—usually respectable-looking senior citizens or parents with young children in tow—for additional screening. Many a TSA official will discover to his (or her) regret that an additional circle, unknown to Dante, has been reserved for them in Hell.

Airports have other drawbacks as well—I can “grumble at large” right along with J. B. Priestley on one of his good days, I assure you. To offer one example: check-in counters that open a mere hour before departure, even though passengers are advised to arrive at the airport at least two hours in advance of their flight. In fact, unstaffed counters of all kinds are a common airportorial defect. No airport ticket counter, lost luggage office, or customer service desk should ever be found without an employee at the ready. Similarly, airport restaurants and shops should be prevented from closing in the early evening, when travelers might still want a meal or newspaper or cup of coffee. These things all violate the Platonic form of the airport, which involves stepping out of time into a world between destinations where all one’s basic needs can be met at any hour of the day or night.

But I fear I am doing a rather poor job of defending airports. So here is what I really like, perverse fellow that I am: a good, long layover, four or five or even six hours, plenty of time to find my connecting gate and settle in for a wait. Priestley, giving vent to an unfortunately romanticized vein of anti-modernism, complains of the impersonal, automated atmosphere he finds in an airport: “The large airports will give you a name, and will cry or boom it out if you have not arrived in the plane; but even so they exist in an atmosphere withering to true personality, an atmosphere in which you are no longer a fellow human being, a man and a brother. So I feel, as I wait, that a huge machine, some triumph of technology, has taken over.”

That all sounds very impressive, of course, in a world-is-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket kind of way. But I’m not sure that it actually means anything. What in the world would it mean to feel like “a man and a brother” in an airport? And what misguided soul would go there in search of “true personality”?

My own airport ambitions are far more modest. Once I locate my gate and get my bearings, the first order of business is to look around for a cup of coffee. As long as the evening is not too far advanced, I can count on succeeding in my mission. I may wander around for a bit, keeping an eye out for any stores I might want to check out later. Then I find a place to settle down, perhaps at my gate if it’s not too crowded, otherwise at some quiet and deserted gate not currently in use. And—you guessed it—out comes my book, maybe even a new one if I’ve just finished one in-flight. And I immerse myself in, say, the essays of J. B. Priestley, or whatever I happen to be reading.

After an hour has gone by, I might want a change of scenery, or just a chance to stretch my legs. Airports are conducive to walking. I explore the concourse, racking up another thousand or so steps on my phone’s trusty step-counter. Invariably I browse a newstand at some point, looking for the local newspaper or perhaps a promising magazine. Most airports have a bookstore or two, and I always duck into one. Unless I am in a foreign country and find myself tempted to return home with a book that just maybe, possibly, if the stars align and I work hard to improve my [fill-in-the-blank with the language of your choice] I might be able to read in a couple of years, it is rare that I actually buy a book in an airport bookstore. Generally I’m already carrying four or five that I want to read more than I would want to read anything I’m likely to find in their fairly generic, broadest (though, to do them justice, not necessarily lowest) common denominator stock. Sometimes, weak-willed, I cave in and buy something from the “local interest” section. Usually I escape unscathed. But richer for the experience of browsing.

Then I read a few more chapters, at which point I might get hungry. Here, I admit, things can sometimes get complicated. I prefer not to spend $14 on a skimpy, soggy, limp wrap of questionable contents. Or $6 on a nothing-special Chobani yogurt that I might buy on sale in the supermarket for $1.99. Usually, however, with a bit of effort, I can find a satisfactory compromise between the demands of price, taste, and quantity. I’ve had surprisingly good luck with those green “Farmer’s Fridge” vending machines that sell Southwest Quinoa Salad or Blueberry Chia Overnight Oats at prices not requiring a second mortgage.

And then, once again, as always, back to my book. Truth be told, in the airport I have more or less everything I need. If I’m hungry, I can get something to eat. If I want a cup of coffee, I’m likely to have several options. If I want to move around, I can get up and walk a mile. If I want a change of pace, I can get a magazine or newspaper. If I finish my book, I can always find another one. I’m highly unlikely to run into anyone I know. Until my plane boards, I have nothing to worry about. I’m living the life.

Perhaps Priestley would have found more “warmth” and “fun” at the Cairo airport with the Egyptian royal family. Image from mideastimage.com, public domain via Wikimedia Commons.

Perhaps I am too easily satisfied. Priestley seems to find all of this cold, disappointing, and inhumane. “Lost in the machine, glum and silent”—he slips back into elegiac, romantic mode as he reaches his conclusion—“we are herded to the tarmac and the most recent example of advanced technology, which will take us to another airport just like the one we have left. The lively event, the warmth, the fun, have gone. It is, at heart, a deadly bore.”

Clearly, he is looking for something (warmth?) that the airport was never meant to provide. The problem is not that I am not too easily satisfied; rather, he is too easily bored. The essence of the airport is not the gloom and silence of people trapped in a machine. The essence of the airport is an endless supply of time and reading material, free of distractions and somewhere just outside the zone of normal temporality.

So go right ahead: tack a couple more hours onto my layover, and delay my return to the demands of ordinary life.

Just don’t lose my luggage, especially if I’ve packed it full with the books I’m bringing home.

Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you next time for another installment “From My Bookshelf.”