As I often do on transcontinental travel days, I wrote my post for the day first thing in the morning. I wasn’t sure how the journey would go so I thought “let’s post this early” in case things get hairy. And boy did it.
I was leaving Europe just as Poland closed its airspace after a Russian drone attack. Tensions were already high as Israel had attacked Hamas inside Qatar’s capital of Doha. Greyzone war that blur attacks on national sovereignty through target or weapon choices make everyone twitchy.
It’s a weird thing to complain about air travel on 9/11, but I don’t think much of the security theater we’ve accepted did much to keep my transit safe yesterday even as twenty four years later we go through the motions of keeping air travel safe from terror.
In fact, it didn’t seem as if security was particularly tight yesterday so much as particularly incompetent. It was just chaotic confusion everywhere from passport checks to boarding flights.
I had a Frankfurt to Chicago polar day flight, along with a positioning flight on each side so I went through a lot of security screenings and passport checks yesterday and stood in more lines than I can count.
In Frankfurt the lines were so long, that even with planned two hour transit time, I was among the last to board my flight.
The “special purposes” line I begged my way into as my inbound was delayed by fog was glacial in its pace. It seems the new transit grift is wheelchairs. So perfectly abled people are now pretending at disability to board early and use special security screening lines.
It me wishing I’d registered my real disability as I attempted to run the two miles of the international terminal with suitcase and backpack so I didn’t miss my flight to Chicago.
Add in enormous families using the special purpose line, who spoke neither German nor English, with 3-4 bags a piece and every sort of banned item from pocket knives to 1.5l bottles of liquids and I am shocked anyone made it through to their flights on time.
I watched a foursome of black Arabic speaking grandmothers in hijabs and wheelchairs shouting at German security guards and their extended families as I waited for my turn. Their fierce attitudes did not speed anything up that I could tell.
I then saw them 9 hours later gathering even more luggage at O’Hare. I’m glad my Global Entry let me pass them by at passport control as I did not want to be behind them again.
Not that I got through Chicago’s security lines easily either. The TSA pre-check lines were four times as line as the regular line. Figuring I was well packed I could handle the normal line, I got randomly selected and unpacked basically everything
As I stood in my socks waiting for the agents to stop gossiping and listen to the only working agent explain that “yes that the ice pack was for medications could they move this along” I got an alert on my phone that the conservative political organizer Charlie Kirk had been shot.
I wandered in a daze to the United club where I was denied entry as, despite booking a business entire ticket through their own hub via their star alliance hub with Lufthansa, I couldn’t use the club the last leg of my flight didn’t qualify.
I knew this was possible as this had happened to me on my last transit so I’d bought a day pass ahead of time. But they weren’t honoring those. I schlepped to another club where they were still letting in day passes. There I listened to scared speculation about Mr Kirk’s status.
Finally I made my way onto my flight to Montana. There I decided to just jump to the front of the line as I was in first.
As the plane boarded it was all talk of Mr Kirk. A news alert crossed my phone saying he had been killed.
A gentleman was playing a video of stitched together angles of footage on his phone with full audio on. You could hear the bullet hit again and again.
The cabin attendant told him to turn it off, saying sir please have some respect for the dead. A few hours later, still living, I made it home to Montana.