there is something oddly compelling about this picture
There’s a TV show called “Airport on the Discovery Wings Channel “a.k.a. the World War II Airplane Channel – not to be confused with the plain ol’ Discovery Channel, the Discovery Times Channel, the Discovery Mountain-Biking-and-Faux-Finishing Channel, the Discovery Animals-Doing-It Channel or the Hitler Channel”. The show follows people through the course of a day at Heathrow “abbreviation LHR: I like to know these things. In fact, you can look them all up and construct your ideal itinerary; I’d like to fly from MMM to OOH by way of HUH.”
What in the hell was I talking about?
Oh, yeah, the show. I love airports and I love traveling, but even so I’m not sure why I like watching it. Obviously they aren’t going to follow someone around who is having a pleasant and uneventful experience. It’s always things like the bridesmaid who has forgotten her passport and is begging the duty manager for Sri Lankan Air to hold the plane another ten minutes while she waits for someone to bring it “he did” or a group of Ethiopian athletes who don’t speak English and the airport information officer who has to try to make them understand they are a day early and in the wrong terminal “he didn’t”. Any given episode perfectly recreates the tension you’ve felt during your worst airport experience, and then gives you new stuff to worry about, like the fact that people apparently are shipping big bags full of baby crocodiles all over the world.
The show demonstrates that while English is the lingua franca of air travel, it isn’t American English or British English – it’s Airport English. Soon everyone in the world will be speaking in cadences simultaneously sing-songy and robotic and using impossibly overblown and obfuscatory phrases. “The title of this post is an announcement I heard at some small airport in the US. What does it really mean other than “testing”?” There will be a term to describe the moment when an airline official stops smiling and being conciliatory and becomes matter-of-fact and unapologetic. “On practically every show you get to watch the Cyprus Airways duty manager go through this transition 20 times as she explains to passengers that their flight is overbooked and they have the choice of going the hell home or accepting these peanuts and a Tom Clancy novel found in a seatback pocket and maybe there’s some room available in the hold.”
In the US, the style seems to remain faux-friendly longer. The last time I flew, I forgot to take my little pocket knife off my keyring. Obviously this raised some concerns among the security staff, and I was taken aside by an officer who explained very thoroughly and even cheerfully that I could not bring my knife onto the plane. Honestly, if he had just said, “What in the hell were you thinking, you moron? I would have been fine with that.
In other countries, airline employees seem to reach the moron-naming stage more quickly. On last night’s episode, the camera followed the activities surrounding, coincidentally, an Icelandair flight from LHR to KEF. “Hey, I gave you a link. Look it up.” Four of the dorkiest young men you could possibly imagine were checking in and discussing how they had chosen their destination. The alpha dork says, “Iceland’s got quite a good reputation for women” His friend, the second-biggest dork on the planet, grins broadly under his bowl haircut and says, “Definitely” There’s a brief pause while all four dorks dork dorkily into the camera, radiating their fervent hope that they will have better luck with the ladies of ReykjavÃk than they have traditionally enjoyed in Staines or Barking or whatever suburban dorkhole they usually dork around in. “Possibly Dorking.” Then you hear the ticket agent say, “I don’t fancy your chances”
