Take Off
Over the weekend, I was stranded for thirty-two hours in Orlando International Airport. During this time, I boarded and disembarked multiple aircrafts, had numerous flights cancelled on me, and had one plane actually catch fire while I was on it. I slept on a public bench outside Burger King, I showered — the word being used in its loosest possible form — in a public restroom sink, I cycled through the rounds of being drunk and sober four times. I revived the ancient tradition of oral storytelling and regaled all of MCO Terminal B with my sob story. I got multiple free drinks of pity in exchange, as well as fries and a spinach cheese dip. At some point, the young eavesdropping bartender at Bahama Breeze expressed his condolences, and I said, if you feel so sorry for me, how about letting me sleep on that couch over there, and he said,
Ma’am, please, I cannot do that. When he was trying to lock up the bar, I asked if he might accidentally lock me in as well, or show me how to climb over the gates so that I could sleep on the bar couch which looked far more ergonomic than the hard airport chairs, and the poor, terrified, twenty-six-year-old bartender mustered up all his sweet, sweet, youthful courage, and said, Ma’am, it is impossible, please stop asking. And when he passed me curled up on the hard wooden bench afterward, his step quickened in fear.
As a child, I wanted badly to see the world, but had no money to do so. And then I matured in the golden age of travel, where the advent of budget flights coincided with the rise of social media, and I made a living, first travel blogging through the perspective of a broke student — sleeping in airports, trains, overnight buses; hitchhiking, couch surfing, backpacking — then later, working as a host for various travel shows, experiencing the strangeness of this world on a client’s coin. It was a good life, but one I put behind me as I pivoted to writing full time, right before the pandemic fragmented the travel genre. Ever since, I’ve been locked into one place. Only my mind roams now, seeking out stories, worlds.
But old habits die hard. Even though it’s been years since my backpacking days, hardiness kicks in like a muscle. The minute my first flight gets cancelled, I begin eyeballing seats, rapidly locating them on the axis of comfort vs safety. I make friends; I share face wash and skincare with another straggler who later watches my back while I nap. I do not panic. I’ve been in similar situations before, I know it will not serve me. The panic and anger, I think, can come later.
Hour 21 into being stranded, I finally wriggle my way onto a flight after several failed attempts and promptly fall asleep. I wake an hour later to the smell of smoke and find that we have not yet taken off. A stewardess is sitting beside me. The plane is on fire, she says. This is the second time in my seven years of flying this has happened. They’re not saying it yet, but the flight will probably be canceled. I’d go get a drink if I were you.
After disembarking from the barbecuing plane and standing in line for 2.5 hours, I finally get hold of a Delta gate agent, who takes pity on me — single female Asian traveller, broke student, with very dirty hair — and puts me on a flight to La Guardia. The light flickers at the end of the tunnel. I thank her profusely and head to the gate, where the pilot stares at my ticket and informs me that the flight doesn’t exist.
What do you mean, doesn’t exist? I have a ticket, right here. She just gave this to me, five minutes ago.
I don’t know why she printed this for you. I don’t know what to tell you. This flight isn’t going.
I run back to the counter and wave at the gate agent, who’s just knocking off her shift. She’s very apologetic, bumps another passenger off a flight to JFK, and puts me on that instead. Then she really has to go. She has something on, a life outside of the airport, something. The next agent who has to actually get my ticket assigned and printed shrugs and tells me that they haven’t found a pilot for this flight, so there’s a fair chance the flight won’t, well. Fly.
I start laughing.
You sold tickets to a fully booked flight with no pilot?
I don’t know what to tell you, she says. Yeah, I guess.
The other gate agent overhears and gets mad. Why did you tell her that?
I laugh even harder. Behind me, a couple of women have a meltdown. It’s the fourth, maybe fifth one I’ve witnessed over the course of this saga.
It’s been thirty hours and I really need to wash my hair. I am keeping a lookout for any flight-attired personnel in hopes that they will be the chosen one, the one who will finally fly us out of here. Thirty one hours. Thirty one and a half. Close to 1 a.m., the intercom splutters and the gate agent announces that they’ve found a pilot, they’ve found enough flight crew, we will take off. Everyone bursts into cheers and applause, relief cutting through the dank air of unwashed bodies, sweating.
It takes me a total of 35 hours to get back to New York, shower, and get into bed.
Over the course of my extended stay in the airport, multiple people have DM-ed, messaged, and emailed me, expressing anger and frustration on my behalf, extending offers of help. But I’m not angry. All that was at risk for me, really, was lower back pain, and time. I’m exhausted, but grateful to be home in more or less one piece. Now that I’m lying in bed and finally have the capacity to panic, I don’t.
Instead, right as I’m falling off to sleep, I think of the strangers I was pressed up against in the airport, all of us clamouring desperately for a way to get home. I think of the couple who was identified for a random security check, weeping at Gate 76 because their ten-year-old son was put on a flight long departed and they now have no idea how to contact him. I think of the single mom, trying to negotiate alternative flight options with a gate agent while her two toddlers shriek behind her, ripping one of her straw hats to shreds.
And I think of the glamorous older woman who smells of apples and has a hardcover thriller wedged under her arm. It’s four in the afternoon, and we stand beside each other, waiting to board the plane that will later catch fire. We still believe that this is the flight that will ferry us home. As we wait to board, she tells me that her pregnant daughter back in New York has just suffered a stroke, and is hospitalised in Sloan Kettering. She is calm as she says this, simply another stranded passenger sharing her woes. But then her eyes fill and she looks mortified.
Sorry, she says, to me. It’s one of those things where you convince yourself that it’s fine. But then when you start talking about it — and here she tilts her head back and blinks rapidly, forcing the tears away before they spill over — you realise how much everything is very not okay. It’s not okay at all.
