Wednesday, July 28, 2004

Quite an eventful afternoon.

I was in a meeting all day at the airport hotel in Philadelphia, daydreaming in between important points being made.  During one of our breaks, we noticed that the line for security was so long that it had spilled out of the airport and into the hotel.  It turns out they had evacuated everyone from the airport because of a security issue.  I called a colleague of mine who had left about 20 minutes prior.  He said he hadn't gone through security yet but was close to the front once they reopened it. 

I jumped on CNN.com and MSNBC to see if I could figure out wtf was going on.  Nothing.  I tried Federal Aviation Administration.  Zilch.  I called my airline where the agent knew less than me.  However he did say all outbound planes were grounded currently.  Inbound were allowed to land.  He had no idea when they would resume but said the planes had to leave cuz they needed them at their destinations by the morning.  I asked about availability for tomorrow morning.  He told me there were 7 seats left on 2 of tomorrow's flights.  Another one was already sold out.  I'm actually amazed he disclosed the number because they never used to do that.

Someone near me spouted out that he saw an AWACS in the air circling the airport.

I started to weigh my options and thought about staying the night.  By this time, apparently so did everyone else because my hotel was overbooked, so I'd have to rent a car (if available) or hop a cab to an alternate hotel.  I called Galahad to let him know my status.  He explained to me what an AWACS is, and I started to feel a twinge of uneasiness.

AWACS: Airborne Warning And Control System. Aircraft fitted with long range radar that provide tactical and target information to air and ground control units. Usually big, slow and extremely high priority, both to defend and to attack.

We decided to go ahead and get our boarding passes and see what the situation was after that.  My manager discovered that the security line at the next terminal was about 45 minutes shorter.  Fortunately I was stuck with a couple of the fun guys so we laughed & joked our way down the long lines and outside down the street to the next terminal.  One did the limbo under the nylon ropes used to keep people in orderly lines.  Security was in fact much shorter there.

We finally had to split up as we were headed to different gates.  Our flights were still showing on-time.  Lying bastards.  I did see planes in the air again which reassured me quite a bit.

Of course I needed to get food so I followed a flight crew member since I figured he'd know where the good places were. :)  For a little bit, people seemed nicer while we all shared a potential crisis.  However, as the mood got back to normal, so did attitudes.  People got cranky again as fear & bewilderment turned to anger -- a much more acceptable emotion for most.

I finally boarded my plane (after talking to Galahad a couple more times to give updates and share some love just in case).  He was very busy at work though so I didn't want to bug him too much.  Amazingly enough, we left the gate only about 10 minutes late.

It had been approximately 3 hours by now, and I had heard 3 theories of wtf may or may not have happened.  One, it was a glitch.  Haha, nice line.  Two, it was a security breach.  And three, it was a test.

About 5 minutes after we backed away from the gate, the pilot said, "this is your captain and uh ... what can I say ... this is a mess."  I had to respect his honesty.  He said we were in line behind a gajillion other planes and only one runway open.  I snuck on my cell phone and called Galahad to let him know I wouldn't be home any time soon.  About 20 minutes later, the pilot came on again and said no change, feel free to turn on your cell phones.

So, I called my brother and caught up with him until I noticed my battery was dying.  Plus my ear hurt at this point from the fucking earpiece.  He reassured me that AWACS are also used to search for inclement weather like tornadoes.  Perhaps this was simply Mother Nature getting cranky at the same time as a defective security machine.  I feel so cutoff from news sitting sealed in here.  I miss the TV & searchable Internet.  Time to settle in with my book and make the best of it.  I'll assume the lady praying next to me will cover the whole row so I don't need to concentrate on that.  :p