Tarmac torture
By Chris Taylor
You werenÂt on that Cathay Pacific flight, were you?Â
People have been asking me this question with a unique mix of sympathy and outright horror. And the answer is yes. The one that idled for 11 hours on the tarmac of New YorkÂs JFK Airport, as we waited in vain for a gate. With two kids crawling over me, ages 2 and 5.
Yes, I was on that flight. And this is what it was like.
It was actually our second time boarding Flight 888, since the previous day, weÂd been delayed until 1 a.m. and then sat on the Vancouver tarmac for three hours, until they finally sent us away at around 4 a.m. because of the blizzard in New York City. Frustrating, sure. But still within the bounds of human normalcy.
It was only the next day that things spun out into some kind of sadistic psychological experiment. My wife likened the experience to having slipped into Rod SerlingÂs Twilight Zone. But I saw more of Jean-Paul SartreÂs play No Exit, the existential classic where mismatched strangers are thrown together for eternity in a tightly enclosed space. As he wrote, ÂHell is other people.Â
We landed a little after 2 a.m. Tuesday, following another three hours on the Vancouver tarmac and another five hours in the air. IÂm unlikely to ever forget the pilotÂs pronouncements that followed. They reminded me of a Stephen King cover blurb for the bestselling book The Hot Zone, about a breakout of the killer Ebola virus. King said the first chapter was the most horrifying thing he had ever read  and then it kept getting worse. In our case, each time the pilotÂs voice came over the intercom, things kept getting worse.
Firstly, we were informed there was no gate to receive us. Oh, and he added casually, a previous plane had waited seven hours. Passengers looked at each other to check their hearing; he couldnÂt have elicited a more chilling reaction if he had announced he had just chopped up his co-pilot and eaten him with a nice Chianti.
A mother of a young child in the row behind me looked as if she had just been stabbed in the neck. Seven hours? That canÂt be right.
In retrospect, I would have taken seven hours in a heartbeat.
Over the ensuing 11 hours, various rationales were tossed out. A missing British Airways crew, a lack of customs officials  two for 1,500 travelers, it was said â and another aircraft that butted in line. Each time it was a couple of hours here, another couple of hours there. Soon it was morning. Then it was lunchtime.
We were able to look outside at the snowy ground, but couldnÂt get to it. It was like the Greek myth of Tantalus, but with blankets and headsets.
Passengers were remarkably calm, perhaps because the aircraft was filled with mild-mannered Canadians. My wife, a fine lass of Haitian descent, claims that a planeload of trapped Haitians  a culture much more accustomed to fighting for their lives, every single day  would have resulted in different headlines. They would have likely commandeered the cockpit, secured a catered breakfast, and personally guided the plane down Flatbush Avenue by sunup.
But we Canadians sat meekly, nibbled our onion crackers, and waited for news. And waited.
As for my children, the gods took pity on us. TodayÂs kids are an entitled generation that expects on-demand Spongebob episodes, a Wii console permanently within reach, and a permanent supply of freshly-made pancakes with real maple syrup. On Flight 888, it goes without saying, we had none of those things.
But by some alchemy, my kids were replaced with children I didnÂt recognize. They slept sweetly most of the way; the elder ate Petit Ecolier chocolate biscuits and played Angry Birds, while the younger was content to tour the plane and play in a makeshift daycare in the back, where other harried parents had gathered. It was a Christmas miracle.
As for the flight staff, they left in the kitchen, buffet-style, a modest wicker basket of crackers and peanuts, along with some open cartons of apple juice. Then they pulled off a neat magic trick: Most of them simply disappeared. I donÂt know if they all gravitated into first class, or if thereÂs a secret hatch to a luxury employee lounge, but many of them just vanished. CanÂt say that I blame them, since they were going on a couple of hours of sleep themselves, and were tasked with dealing with hundreds of passengers with no resources.
At one point I asked a flight attendant if she had ever been through anything like this, in her entire career in the air. Her response: ÂNever. At a certain point she even developed fear in her eyes, as if she was concerned we were going to rise up and roast her limbs for brunch.
The punchline: When we finally deplaned on Tuesday afternoon, in a different terminal and without a single Cathay staffer to receive us, customs officials told us we couldnÂt leave the area without our bags. Which, since the airline didnÂt have any baggage handlers, meant perhaps another couple of days sleeping on benches in the airport terminal.
Faced with an armed insurrection â and the Âextenuating circumstances, as one kindly guard put it  security decided to let us out of JFK Airport. With no bags, and psychologically debilitated, but at least with our freedom. In the taxi line, we all looked around and squinted as if weÂd just been released from the hole on Rikers Island.
IÂm not sure how much longer we all would have lasted, fresh out of baby milk and patience. But if thereÂs an enduring moral to Cathay Pacific Flight 888, itÂs this: Whatever life throws at you, you plaster a smile on your face and keep moving. Or not moving, as the case may be.
Chris Taylor is an award-winning freelance writer in New York City. He can be reached at christaylornyc@yahoo.com.
