FoxTrot Classics by Bill Amend for February 19, 2021

how does a plane move from gate to gate? when one gate is already occupied?

Plane arrives early or late, and its assigned gate is changed before it reaches the terminal. Sometimes the reassignment gets changed because another plane hasn’t left that gate yet. It happens.

A friend was on a PIA flight that landed at JFK airport in New York. After landing they traveled a long time to get to the gate. After a while, the passenger next to my friend started laughing. He said the pilot must be lost because they passed the same spot three times now.

I used to fly from Valdosta to New York. I took a biplane from Valdosta. I exaggerate, it wasn’t that bad – it wasn’t open cockpit, but it had two prop engines that would shake the plane and obscure the ramp with blue smoke when started and it was a tail dragger.

I knew I was in trouble when the guy who checked me in also loaded the luggage and then put on the captain’s hat. The rest of the crew arrived with bags containing the coffee and doughnuts picked up at a local shop: breakfast.

The flight would make 12 stops on its way to Atlanta: two more than Greyhound but it was sometimes 15 minutes faster, depending on how many crops Captin’ Beauregard had to dust on the way.

I pointed out the oil leak streaking down the side of the engine to the flight attendant. She said, “That’s normal. It means we still have oil. When it stops, then we’re in trouble.”

When it pulled in to the terminal at ATL, I would be about 100 feet away from my connecting flight … tail to tail. My flight would pull in at the extreme end of one terminal and my departing flight would be at the extreme end of another terminal. Each terminal corridor was about a mile long.

I miss flying those regional airlines: Southern, Mohawk, Ozark, Piedmont.

I had to go to Wausau WI often and the flight was into O’Hare and then a prop job trip to Wausau. The prop job gate was all the way to the other end of the airport. No transportation, had to walk for about a mile. Some moving walkways, but what a pain.

WHAT plane is he running to catch? There were no flights going where he needed to go. And where is his golf bag?

Once when I went to catch a flight, I noticed the gate was B12. I told the gate agent it was the vitamin gate.

They should collect the passengers for off scheduled arrivals, then load and deliver them on the food truck elevator.

This is bigger airport than you would think.

Must be Dallas…before the trams.

I wonder if at the end of this arc we’ll find this whole thing is a dream (I have complicated worry-dreams when I have to get to an airport).

Meanwhile, the plane is taxiing in circles around the terminals. There will be a delay to refuel before takeoff.

So not right.

He should know not to go on a flight with the number 1313