Let’s face it: airports are one of the most stressful places on the planet. They’re filled with tired, anxious, and irritable people who are in a hurry to catch their flight. Some of those people have screaming children who don’t want to be there. And who doesn’t get at least a little anxious at TSA?
I was 11 months old for my first flight and since then, I’ve had countless stressful, challenging, and chaotic experiences at airports. But here, I’ll just be talking about two experiences I’ve had in the last year, one halfway across the world from the other.
My first time on a plane this year was on a study abroad trip to Greece. To get there, we had three flights. One from JFK to London, then London to Athens, and Athens to Crete. That means we had two connections to make in less than 24 hours. If that wasn’t stressful enough, imagine traveling with and keeping track of 20 college students. Shoutout to my professors.
Anyway, when we arrived at the London/Heathrow airport, we were late and had to SPRINT from our gate, through security, up and down escalators, and to our new gate. At some point in all that madness, we got split up and half of us made it on the plane and the others didn’t. We were terrified because we didn’t know if they’d take off without half our class and our professors. Thankfully, they didn’t. So, now you’d think, “Okay, everything’s fine now. We’re all on the plane. Nothing else could go wrong.” But, as we all know, it can always get worse. When we arrived in Athens, we learned that three-fourths of our group lost their luggage because they couldn’t get it on the second plane in time. Thankfully, everyone got their bags back and it ended up being okay.
The second time I was on a plane was with a family friend on a trip to Lake Michigan. We knew what time our flight was and woke up early in the morning for our taxi. Everything was very calm, until we had to put her cats in their carriers. See, this was my first time traveling with pets so I didn’t know what to expect. Needless to say, they were not happy about it. One of them hid somewhere in the apartment and it took ten minutes to find her. At that point, the taxi driver had arrived and he was getting angry about the wait. When we finally got ourselves and the cats together, we drove to LaGuardia Airport with the sounds of scared, unhappy cats filling the car.
At the check-in line, there were only a few people working at the desks and a long line, so it took us a long time to actually get to someone. Unfortunately, the woman who checked us in didn’t know how to check pets in on a flight. We had reserved their spots on the plane, but there was a lot of confusion. After talking to her supervisor, she got us our boarding passes, now with only 30 minutes until takeoff. At this point, I was really panicked because I hate having to rush anywhere, especially in an airport. As if things couldn’t get more stressful, when we gave our IDs to the guy at security, he DROPPED mine in between the desks. He tried to get it out himself, but had to call someone to get it out for him. My family friend whispered to me, “We’re gonna miss this flight.” But thankfully, someone came within two minutes and saved my ID. Surprisingly, going through TSA was one of the least anxiety-inducing parts of the day. Even with having to take the cats out of the carriers, things went pretty smoothly. All that was left was to RUN to our gate because takeoff was now in five minutes. Let me just say this: running through an airport with a heavy backpack and a cat on your shoulder was exactly as fun as it sounds. Thankfully, we ended up making it to the gate in time and the flight was uneventful. Other than one of the cats meowing the whole time.
Even though both of these experiences had happy outcomes, living through them was challenging and anxiety inducing. But hey, at least I got some good stories out of them. And I hope to get even more in the future.
Feature Image by Peri Oberman, via Canva
