Airport folly

Airport Folly

A fine line separates complacency and idiocy.

In recent years I have been a frequent traveller through Malaga airport. I know its layout, and its procedures, well. Its international terminal is not large, in comparison with London airports (although it is the fourth biggest airport in Spain). It is divided into Schengen and non-Schengen areas (Schengen referring to the agreement between certain EU countries to dispense with border controls for travel between them). For flights to the non-Schengen UK, there are two gate areas, or piers, “B” and “C”. They are about 100 meters apart.

Returning to London Stansted this January, I nonchalantly negotiated the security screening and then glanced at the Departures display. It showed that my flight’s gate would be given in about half an hour – time to queue patiently for coffee, water and a takeaway sandwich. Having purchased these items, I strolled over to another display, saw Stansted and the number of a gate in pier B. Off I sauntered.

Airports are full of notices warning you that you have reached a point beyond which no return is permitted. One such notice is always prominent when you present your passport at the exit control before a gate area. (Why there is a need for passport control for departures is another question…).

My flight was at noon. Boarding was called, in the usual way: by a tannoy announcement that rendered both English and Spanish incomprehensible. Eventually I joined the boarding queue.

There was something I was finding puzzling. Mine was an Easyjet  flight to Stansted, at 12. But the gate was displaying a Ryanair flight to Stansted at 1150. Did I take the hint? I did not. I was sure of the information I’d casually gleaned from the earlier departure board: this was my gate, and the gate notice must be wrong. I looked at the ground staff – there seemed to be some orange (the Easyjet colour) in their uniforms’ braiding. So that was that, then. I continued to queue.

(Looking back, it is humiliating to acknowledge that corrective information was in plain sight, but could not refute my complacent certainty about my gate. Not just humiliation: it scary to think about the other circumstances in which such a bias might operate – politics? Relationships?..)

A ground staffer worked his way through the queue, examining boarding passes and tagging bags for offloading to the hold – a common experience with all budget airlines. He reached me – and pointed out the blindingly obvious: wrong airline, wrong gate… and, as a quick and panicked look at a nearby Departure screen told me, wrong pier.. My Easyjet flight was leaving from pier C and was even now subject to “last call”.

Shame and panic vied to dominate. My next self-inflicted problem: the forbidding “No Return after Here” sign at passport control. Wretchedly I edged past the policemen’s booths. One saw me. I waved my boarding pass, grinning apologetically. He gave me a flat palm air-push onwards (doubtless this was not the first time a confused Costa del Sol Brit had gone astray).

All airport users are familiar with those benighted passengers that run madly to make their gates on time, coats flapping, shoulder bags slapping thighs or bums. For the next few minutes, I was one of those sad persons.

At pier C passport control I was shaking so much that I could barely open my passport. The frontier police regarded my agitation with a mild professional appraisal – but let me through to run towards a queue-less Easyjet departure gate, and my correct flight.

(At Stansted, I was rejected by the electronic passport gate. There was a replacement coach service for the usual train to London Liverpool Street. Naturally, I queued for 10 minutes or so for a different (regular) coach service, also going to Liverpool Street, before being again corrected by a queue monitor.

I am wondering long and deeply about taking myself anywhere again.

Jan 2018