Distance Kills The Best Of Intentions
I was literally staring at the sun when I accepted my error.
Now, granted, I was significantly out of practice. We all were, frankly, by virtue of a thing that diminishing returns-levels of us are only just acknowledging now. But I recently took a trip to Myrtle Beach, flying for the first time in a year and a half from my home in New York City, and ended up elsewhere.
“It’s been fun arguing with you all weekend in the kitchen,” my dad said, as I started to gather my only bag and slide out the door. “Safe travels, and no news is good news, as your mother says.”
I’d taken a trip in my parents’ van to pick up a Bojangles biscuit prior to arrival, so I had that with me as I went through security — quickly — and made my way to the gate.
As always, I made haste through the terminal, trying to assess how early I needed to be at my gate, and what kind of time I had on my hands. I wasn’t interested in a drink beyond my bottle of water; I wanted to get to a recently-departed flight’s gate, and eat in those seats.
I found some seats in between two flights; I took care of that biscuit. It was just enough sustenance for me to think I could make it back to Harlem without sneaking a snack via chips at the bodega on my corner. “No matter how late it is,” I knew, in my gradually expanding brain, “it will be open.”
After finishing my sandwich, I joined the line to my (my?) flight. The guy ahead of me told me he didn’t know what his zone was, but that he just followed his wife, curiously nowhere to be seen as we boarded. A lady walked over from the bar right next to the gate and joined us, excited not to have missed her zone. I knew what zone I was in; I was sure, or else I wouldn’t have joined the line in the first place, but shout out to both of those people.
When I got to the gate agent, I handed her my phone — being the diligent traveler I am/was, I dialed up the boarding pass ahead of time. Ha! I am smart, and I know how the game works.
I arrive at the gate, its destination laid out plainly in white font against a blue background, next to a separate destination on the same background. Not a big deal; I can roll with this.
The Spirit representative told me the scanning item wasn’t working, or they weren’t running it, or anyway, have a good flight, after personally typing in my sequence number without paying much mind to the destination. I trusted her; life being what you make it, she was just trying to make this easier for me and for everybody else.
I plugged my headphones in and listened to a Lowe Post podcast I had delayed during my time in Myrtle Beach, and the rest happened as it should’ve: flight attendant demonstrations, repeated assurances, bathroom warnings and all the rest of the things you might recognize from FAA-standard voiceovers at any airport you’ve ever been to. The plane took off, I halfway nodded off to quotations from Denver Nuggets coach Mike Malone, and that was that.
I’m not sure when I tuned in, but at some point I had my headphones out and was listening to the captain’s announcement: “Well, folks, in about 45 minutes, we should be making a safe landing in Fort Lauderdale. Winds (whatever), skies (whatever), but we’ll be getting you there soon.”
My first and only thought was, well, “This man is confused! He’s a pilot; he goes to multiple, intracontinental places per day. ‘Lauderdale’ and ‘LaGuardia’ sound sort of similar. This is fine.”
At that point, I realized that I was sitting on the right side of the plane, in a seat that wasn’t actually mine — I’d seen other people in my seat, and knowing it was a half-empty plane, I’d figured that I’d just sit in the row ahead of them, that they knew each other and wanted to fly together — that I had been leisurely staring at the sun setting in the west: the complete wrong direction for my purposes. I was flying south, and I would soon actually land in Fort Lauderdale, despite my perceived criticisms of modern pilots.
It’s hard to describe this feeling, but for about twenty or thirty seconds, I felt like someone had shot ice water directly into my spinal cord. Everything was cold; I must’ve looked grey in the face, but the only other person in my row was similarly disengaged from a playlist he had cued up on the runway.
Around twenty seconds or an eternity later, when I accepted that this wasn’t an MTA flop, and that I couldn’t simply get off at the next bus stop and move on with my life in the other direction, I got up and informed the flight crew of my predicament: this ended up being the most surprisingly cool interaction of this entire experience, in terms of how anybody dealt with what I told them (I was frantic the entire time, so how anybody dealt with me was a gift, but especially how the initial crew did actually was). How often does this actually happen?
They got me two bottles of water, sat me down in a back row, grabbed me my bag from the previous row and told me it would ultimately be okay — it’s reassuring and also dismissive to just hear that from complete strangers, but it’s nevertheless good, whether you’re nine or 29.
Apparently: the flight crew told the pilot, who told whatever air traffic control looks like now, who let the airline know, who told them there would be a flight back to LaGuardia that night, from Ft. Lauderdale, but that flights into LaGuardia were delayed because of impending and already-arrived storms. “99% sure,” was a phrase I heard a few times from the flight crew, in reference to a few things.
When we landed, the crew gave me information to re-book a flight and, if needed, to book a hotel. At this point, I was simultaneously accepting my fate as an airline casualty, sausage in name to the reels of standby passengers that deserve to be places more often than anyone else, most of the time, while also double-, triple- and quadruple-checking what anyone around me told me. I was looking over my shoulder for nobody at all who would be looking for me, except that I was in the wrong city and increasingly paranoid.
I made a few phone calls, the most important of which was to a friend in Miami — the last time I’d been to Ft. Lauderdale’s airport, or anywhere outside of the tristate area, in fact, was to his apartment — and, after explaining my situation, he offered a place to say should I need it (Thanks again, Tom).
The crew gave me some reading material as we were all walking away. At one point, one member offered to help more on a longer-term basis, but she said she couldn’t, because they had to be elsewhere.
I said, “Oh, because you’ve got to get to (x-destination, which they had announced would be different for the plane as from the crew) next, right?”
“Yes!” one member said. “At least somebody listens!”
“Well,” another went, “this time.” We all laughed. Like everything else directly or indirectly involving me, I’d caused this. So I laughed. They escorted me off the plane.
In the terminal, I encountered the pilot, who shook my hand, replaced his mask and then asked me, coolly and in good humor, which I expect all pilots are after they land a fucking plane, “So you’re the LaGuardia Guy, huh?”
“Yeah, yes I am,” I said.
“You know, you gave us a bit of a scare,” he said. “We heard a troubling passenger was about, and we didn’t know what to do. But you’ll be fine.”
“Thank you, captain,” I said. He probably couldn’t personally cure my ill, but at least he was sympathetic to it.
After losing myself in the throngs of late pickups/early departures that is the Ft. Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, I worked out an arrangement with an understanding rep at the Special Services desk — again, how often does this actually happen? — and then booked a Lyft to the hotel, that I was left to book, only two miles away.
Around midnight, a driver picked me up and drove me to the hotel. The desk assistant at the hotel knew it, too: “Are you…Spirit Airlines guy?” Yup, that’s me. Thank you for my card, and I’ll be out in the morning.
When I arrived at the hotel, having not eaten in six or so hours, I looked up places to eat that might have distribution channels after dark. What was closest? You already know the answer, and no, it wasn’t open when I actually tried to get anything:
I fell asleep to one television of two in my inexplicably suite-sized room playing HBO, and woke up diligently on time. At this point, I was laughing, although I was not yet back in New York.
A shuttle driver told me that next morning that I was silly for living in my particular, current fear because “South Florida weather be like this.” I know enough not to doubt that.
Granted, Fort Lauderdale wasn’t the absolute worst place to wind up — what if I had accidentally boarded a flight to the west coast, for example, without a harder plan — but it was also practically not the worst place; my wardrobe from Myrtle was easily transferable.
From here, if it wasn’t already, it gets boring: I bought some trail mix, waited around for everybody else to figure out, and then actually boarded a flight for the tristate area (this time, regrettably, to Newark, probably my least favorite airport still in existence and much farther from my home than LaGuardia had been, which was the reason I’d booked that flight in the first place).
After explaining and sorting things somewhat out with relevant parties, including my actual-job manager, and then negotiating NJTransit, I arrived home, an unnecessary fifteen hours spent in the purgatory outside of Miami.
There are things that I’ll always regret more, or lament more, or feel heavier feelings for more due to context, but as far as outright stupidity and/or ignorance goes, I’m settled on this one taking the trophy. I accept that. However, well —
Let this be a lesson: while Spirit is definitely at fault, so are all the agencies seemingly specifically designed to prevent something like this from happening. And yet, in 2021, it still did. Praise be, and make sure to double- and triple-check your gates next time you’re at the airport.
