When my family was living in India and I was attending university in Alaska, I usually had to take a minimum of five flights to get from the start of the trip to the end. After my first semester, when we booked my flights around the semester and then had to pay booking change fees when we knew my exam schedules, my mother decided to send me back to Alaska on a one-way ticket so that we could book the next round trips around my vacations rather than around my semesters. That one-way trip was the only time when I had only four flights, and it was a terrible experience.
My route went as follows: a domestic flight from Hyderabad to Delhi, followed by an excruciatingly long flight from Delhi to LA (via London, where it stopped for fuel). From there I was to fly to Fairbanks via Seattle.
Since I was a child, I had loved long flights. I loved the chance to watch movie after movie or immerse myself in a book, and later, once I had my own computer, to do whatever I liked for a hours at a time with no distraction except flight attendants bringing drinks and food.
This flight was long enough to put a dent in my enjoyment. For one thing, there was no personal entertainment system. Normally, this was endurable; this flight, however, was nearly 24 hours in duration.
It was, unfortunately, made even longer by the fact that we were delayed several hours.
Worse still, after we landed in LA, it took me a solid two more hours to make my way through the slow-moving, pushy line of immigration (just the memory is enough to inspire gratitude for those automatic terminals that they’ve been using for the last few years).
Naturally, by the time that I made it through immigration, it was four or five hours after I was supposed to have landed, and my connecting flight had gone. There was a line of people being rebooked before they went out of customs, so I joined the line and waited another hour.
Of course, once I reached the front of the line, I was informed that because Air India had nothing to do with Alaska Airlines and my tickets had been booked separately, I had to go talk to Alaska Airlines instead.
Air India and Alaska Airlines were two terminals apart, and the terminal in the middle was under construction, and therefore deserted and dark as I rushed through it, ignoring the shadows in my imagination.
Naturally, Alaska Airlines informed me that because they were not affiliated with Air India, they were not responsible for my delay and I would have to rebook. After running back and forth through the deserted terminal and even (out of sheer desperation) trying tearing up and declaring, “But I’m only seventeen, I’m a Minor!” I could elicit no sympathy. At last I conceded and rebooked—for the next morning.
I contacted my mother and let her know, as a friend of hers was supposed to meet me in Seattle. She asked me if I wanted her to contact a friend of hers who lived in LA, who was my sister’s godmother. I told her that it was only eight hours or so, hoping that she would insist. She didn’t, and merely wished me a good night. I said goodbye and hung up so that she wouldn’t hear how my throat was closing and my eyes were filling with tears.
I had a large backpack, a computer bag and a large suitcase. I felt a marrow-deep exhaustion that I’d never experienced before, much less from a plane trip. I saw people sleeping in seats, huddled around their bags to keep them from being stolen in their sleep. The terminal was deadly silent, except for the occasional snort or snore. Occasionally, I would see someone laying on their side with their eyes open, following me as I walked, and I felt terrified. I tried to arrange myself and my bags in a seat to sleep, but my suitcase and backpack were too large for me to keep a hold on them. I could do one or the other, but not both.
The fear mounted with my exhaustion, so I went to the bathroom. I locked myself in the handicapped stall, left my suitcase and backpack against the wall and hung my laptop bag on the hook, and sat on the toilet and tried to sleep. It was by far more comfortable than any location I’d tried before, but every sound of a person entering the bathroom startled me into waking and I wasn’t resting at all.
After half an hour that felt like a day, I gave up and wandered around with my bags until at last, I found an outlet in a hallway with no seats at all. Perching myself on top of the heating vent, I called my mother’s friend in Seattle.
She talked with me for perhaps half an hour or an hour, until my phone was running low on battery (I couldn’t charge it and talk at the same time). I felt safe while I was on the phone, and was terrified to hang up, lest the exhaustion and the terror come rushing back. Fortunately, it didn’t. I plugged in my laptop and wrote stories until the dawn finally arrived and the terminal started groggily coming back to life.
I had a croissant and slept on my flight to Seattle, where I ran into a friend from university and my mother’s friend came to meet me for a scant half hour or so before I had to go back through security to my next flight. I was (somehow) perfectly chipper and energetic by then.
(But on occasion, the thought of flying into LA still fills me with a sort of remembered sense of horror.)