BEST Code Orange Flight EVER

Last Thursday, as I woke up, my head was clouded, my eyes were bleary, and I was trying to calculate just how little sleep I had gotten (my estimate is about 3 hours - don't you judge me for my Wednesday night social activities). I turned on the television, and the newscasters voice cut through all of the haze by saying, "and all airports are on code orange. There is an elevated risk to flying today". The report went on to detail how the absolute worst airport to fly out of in the US was BWI. The lines at BWI were horrible, the people at BWI were horrible, the water bottles at BWI were horrible, the delays at BWI were horrible, well you get the idea…. The general consensus was that flying out of BWI on Thursday was Not A Good Idea.

Which of course is exactly what I was doing... Hungover.

Yes, Thursday was the day that I was making my summer flight home to Buffalo to visit the family. Thursday is also the day that ordinary freedom loving Americans were having their bags emptied out and criminalized for possessing such items as chapstick, contact lens solution, hair products and other assorted liquids and gels.

After spending the day listening to the news reports of just how horrible of a place BWI was that day and having various family members play air traffic control as they watched the news reports, I decided that I would check my bag (for a four day trip) and cash in on my fifteen minutes of fame by starring on CNN as "irate traveller number 3".

When work was as done as it was going to be for the day, I drove up to BWI. On the parking lot bus, I applied a little bit of powder and lipstick (heaven forbid I be on national news looking like I felt) and mentally rehearsed what I was going to say, "It's a shame that we cannot bring simple things like liquid and gels on flights anymore" and "When Bill Hemmer worked at CNN was he as hot in real life as he appeared to be on television?"

Anyway, despite all of my preparation, it turns out that the cluster that allegedly was BWI was a bit overhyped, which is something that the media has never been known to do. I would estimate that the entire flight checking in, bag checking, and security process took approximately one half hour, which isn't bad considering that this was supposed to the golden standard of delayed airports.

All of my worry about the annoyance of security made me forget to be annoyed at the airline that I was flying. It was southwest airlines, which is an airline that in my humble opinion brings out the very worst in human nature. With their quirky "open seating" policy Southwest has unwittingly inflicted many a case study on strung out business students. While "open seating" works from a business perspective, the price is at a severe human cost. Instead of just vegging and trying to forget that you are in the worst airport on the worst day of the year, people were anxiously sitting in rows near the designated "A", "B", and "C" areas. Some people went as far as to line up in the areas, sleeping on the floor and generally looking miserable. As soon as the friendly Southwest representative touched the microphone to pick it up to begin to announce boarding, the people began clamouring like desperate animals to be the very first on the plane and get the very best seat which was highly necessary for the flight which was a whole 40 minutes. There were elbows flying, curse words uttered, fists thrown, mace sprayed, etc.

As I stood back, popping another aspirin (which was not washed down with any liquids or gels), and trying to figure out if I was an "A", "B" or "C", I surveyed the scene in front of me and realized that all that a Code Orange Day meant was that there were less security personnel around to regulate the Southwest customers.