{"id":2334,"date":"2010-01-09T00:02:05","date_gmt":"2010-01-09T04:02:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=2334"},"modified":"2010-01-08T19:16:53","modified_gmt":"2010-01-08T23:16:53","slug":"qotd-the-awfulness-of-airports","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2010\/01\/09\/qotd-the-awfulness-of-airports\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The awfulness of airports"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Over the weekend, an idiot walked the wrong way through a secure exit for arriving passengers at Newark airport. An entire terminal was shut down so that everybody on the \u201csterile\u201d side of the security barriers could be herded back out and rescreened. The entire process took just under seven hours. The cascading delays disrupted air travel worldwide. They didn\u2019t even catch the doofus who caused the ruckus. No doubt, if they\u2019d announced his location over the paging system, he\u2019d have been drawn and quartered by a mob of traveling salesmen from 3M and a gaggle of middle-school girls returning from a volleyball tournament.<\/p>\n

Now, I should back up. When I referred to the \u201csterile\u201d side of the security barrier, I was using the term narrowly, to refer to folks who\u2019d been through the metal detectors. Because to use the word \u201csterile\u201d in its usual context in a sentence with \u201cairports\u201d — those belching Petri dishes of bathroom effluence and unidentifiable noisome miasma — would be a grotesque abrogation of journalistic trust.<\/p>\n

According to the latest epidemiological research, airports reside somewhere between no-frills Haitian brothels and Penn State fraternity bathrooms when it comes to hygiene. USA Today<\/em> recently surveyed the health-inspection records of airport restaurants and found that serious code violations were as commonplace as rat and mouse droppings; 77 percent of 35 restaurants reviewed at Reagan National Airport had at least one major violation.<\/p>\n

I could go on, of course. The petty humiliations, the routine deceptions from airline employees desperate to rid themselves of troublesome travelers (\u201cOh, they can definitely help you at the gate!\u201d), the stress-position seats, the ever-changing rules for what can and cannot be in your carry-on, being charged for food that the Red Cross would condemn if it were served at Gitmo: Air travel is the most expensive unpleasant experience in everyday life outside the realm of words ending in -oscopy.<\/p>\n

Jonah Goldberg, “A No-Fly List? Count Me In: Flying before 9\/11 was already awful, and it has only become worse”, National Review<\/em><\/a>, 2010-01-08<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the weekend, an idiot walked the wrong way through a secure exit for arriving passengers at Newark airport. An entire terminal was shut down so that everybody on the \u201csterile\u201d side of the security barriers could be herded back out and rescreened. The entire process took just under seven hours. The cascading delays disrupted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,41,13],"tags":[52,123,156,201,257,202],"class_list":["post-2334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-quotations","category-usa","tag-absurd","tag-aircraft","tag-fail","tag-securitytheatre","tag-terrorism","tag-travel"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-BE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2334"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2335,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2334\/revisions\/2335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}