The Airline
OPINION —
I’m in an airport. My wife and I are camped out at airline concourse B with other stranded airline passengers.
We were all booted off our flight because the plane was overbooked. I believe I was booted off, however, because I was the only passenger openly carrying a banjo.
Thankfully, the airline offered us cash to get off the flight. Whereas passengers ahead of us were just told to get off.
Even so, I’m sure the airline has a really good reason for overbooking their own flight. I’m sure their intentions were honorable.
The airline was probably trying to earn money so they could donate excess cash to cancer research, or eradicating starvation, or rehabilitating endangered purple frogs.
Or maybe the overbooking was purely an accident. Maybe the airline, although having been leaders in the airline industry since 1925, still hasn’t figured out the tricky business of calculating passenger-to-cargo-weight ratios.
To be fair, it’s very difficult to predict how many passengers will actually be on your plane even though each passenger has paid a small fortune for their ticket several months in advance, and each passenger has checked in via computer, phone app, and agent-operated kiosk, multiple times, before physically arriving at the effectual airline gate.
Either way, my fellow booted-off passengers are not happy because many don’t feel they were treated fairly. Some were given money to evacuate. Some were given vouchers. Some were given the shaft.
Aggravated passengers are calling family members, venting to loved ones on phones, talking loudly about what, precisely, they wish would happen to wealthy airline executives as the executives eat their Cornish hens at supper tonight.
In the interest of anonymity, I won’t tell you which airline left us stranded, because I don’t think Delta Airlines would want that.
But anyway, here we are. Stuck in an airport. Again. Second time this month.
My instruments are scattered around us. One fiddle. One banjo. An accordion. We are not going to get home tonight.
We do not know, truthfully, what will become of us. Maybe we’ll be stuck here forever. Maybe we’ll start new lives here in the airport. Maybe we’ll pioneer over to Concourse D and stake a claim. Maybe we’ll build a little house out of vending machine food wrappers and start a little family.
It’s inconvenient, yes, living in an airport. But I’m not disappointed because I love airports.
I love everything about them. I love the way the overhead music is always the same Phil Collins song, “Sussudio,” playing on repeat. I love the way the men’s rooms all have pee-slickened floors. I love paying $16 for a lukewarm beer.
Still, no matter how off-putting this is, I know the airline employees care deeply about me. I know this by the way the male flight attendant was yelling at me to get off the plane.
He was insisting that I deboard the plane without my wife. My wife was, apparently, supposed to stay on the plane while I disembarked, for money, even though all I truly wanted was to go home.
“You cannot get off the plane together,” he said in a loud voice.
“But,” I pointed out, “we’re married.”
“That’s not my problem,” he replied.
Don’t misunderstand. Delta was not trying to break up my marriage. They were only trying to strengthen our matrimonal bond by using a specific marriage building technique they often use to fortify the relationships of their most valued customers. Delta believes in families.
But in the end, my wife deboarded the plane with me. I’m only glad my wife didn’t make things worse by introducing the flight attendant to the Alabama state bird.
So we both got off the plane together. The flight attendant did not appreciate this. He was not a happy person when we left.
As we walked away, he said, “Fine! I don’t care what you do!”
But it had to happen this way, you see. My wife had to leave with me. Because my wife and I can’t split up.
It wouldn’t be fair to the banjo.
Sean Dietrich is a columnist, novelist and stand-up storyteller known for his commentary on life in the American South. His column appears in newspapers throughout the U.S. He has authored 15 books.