Out of My Mind (6 page)

I don't like to see an airline go bankrupt, but a lot of airlines are going out of business because of the intrusive and time-consuming security measures the government insists on. They are never going to catch one single terrorist intent on blowing up a plane, but they are going to deter millions of people from taking the kind of unnecessary trips airlines depend on for business. No one wants to undergo an hour-long strip search of body and luggage to take a pleasure trip. I do have a suggestion for airlines. It will probably be dismissed as elitist, but I like a little elitism.

It's my premise that most people, quite obviously, are not going to blow up an airplane or commit any kind of terrorist act. I know we're supposed to oppose profiling of any kind, but my profile is so benign they could safely issue me, and millions of other travelers, some kind of permanent, non-transferable ID card allowing us instant access to our seats on any plane.

I see no reason why most Americans couldn't apply for and receive such cards, permitting them to board a plane, with their baggage, as soon as they arrived at the airport.

While such a system might prove unfair to people unable to get a card, it would solve a lot of problems for the airlines. If there were such a pass, and if I had one, I would have flown six times in the past three months. Without it, I stayed home. Going wasn't worth the hassle.

If it was more foolproof than a card, they could use some kind of fingerprint identification system. Anyone who'd been cleared could walk up to the gate at the airport, press his thumb on a plate and an ALL CLEAR sign would light up as the device read the fingerprint.

I have just taken a memorable trip I'd like to forget.

Because I was going to be in Los Angeles for only two days, I drove from my office in New York to Kennedy Airport so I'd have my car when I returned and could drive home to Connecticut. The parking area is just a minute's walk across the road from American Airlines.

When I arrived at the airport for a 9 A.M. flight at 7:30, I thought I had plenty of time. Sure. The short-term parking lot was closed for repair. I was directed to a lot two miles from the terminal. By the time I found it, parked and waited for the bus to take me to the terminal, it was 8:17. The baggage attendants outside told me my flight was “closed” and I could no longer check bags. Inside, I waited in line to check my bag anyway. By the time I got to the gate (all flights leave from the most remote gate), it was 8:40 and they were closing the door.

First class for the round trip flight cost $2,762.90. Business class cost $1,858.90. A coach seat was $517.90. I flew coach. Airlines make coach so uncomfortable that even people who can't afford it pay the “business” rate.

In flight, the pilot kept announcing that we were ahead of schedule. We landed nine minutes early, and after being told to keep our seats, we waited . . . and waited . . . and waited. Then came the inevitable : “There is a plane parked at our gate which should be moving out shortly. Please remain in your seats. Thank you for your patience.” Which we were not.

Flight times should be recorded from the time they close the door for takeoff to the time they open the door to let passengers off. The advertised time of my flight was five hours and fifty-seven minutes. From the time we had to be on board to the time we were allowed off, it was seven hours and twelve minutes.

At baggage claim, the carousel went round and round. My bag never came 'round. At the lost baggage office, I waited in line. They were doing a booming business. I finally got to talk to a woman behind the desk, who said my bag would be arriving on the next flight. I opted to have the bag sent to my hotel.

In Beverly Hills, I went to the hotel I've stayed in a hundred times. It's also expensive but I could stay there for weeks for what first class costs on American.

In my room, I called American baggage service at 12:30 and was told my bag had been found and would be delivered “within six hours.” I once worked at MGM, so I drove around some old familiar places, including Malibu Beach, wasting time waiting for my bag. I needed things in it to dress for dinner with friends. When I got back to the hotel, I called American again and got the “six hour” announcement again. It had now been five.

There was a huge window over the bathtub in the hotel room and by pressing a button next to the light switch, you could open a curtain that allowed you to look out on a palm frond garden.

I took a shower more to waste time than from necessity—I wasn't that dirty—and dried off with a thick towel that was six feet long. It made the bath towels at home seem puny.

After the shower, I read the paper and waited for my bag, which didn't come. It was delivered sometime after midnight, so I went out to dinner in khaki pants and slept in a terrycloth robe.

Sunday night, I ate dinner in my room because I wanted to watch
60 Minutes.
Mike Wallace interviewed Putin. Morley Safer's report on West Point was good. I could have done without Steve Kroft's chat with Ray Romano, but I watched it almost to the end. Almost. Next thing I knew, I woke up and they were showing the
60 Minutes
credits. I had missed the best part of the show.

I'll tell you about my trip home another time. It wasn't as good as the trip out.

I've been thinking about airplanes since they grounded the Concordes because they were too expensive. It was sad. I flew twice in a Concorde. CBS paid for it and I forget how I convinced them I was that important and in so much of a hurry. I don't remember what it cost, but the fare on the last trip for one person from New York to London and back was $10,000.

There's some basic law of nature being violated—although I can't put my finger on what it is—when we are able to invent something so expensive we can't afford it.

Most people remember their first airplane ride or some memorable flight they've taken. I always get wondering how those little wings on a passenger plane can keep 200 passengers, all their luggage and 5,000 gallons of gas up in the air.

I flew a lot in what may be the greatest airplane ever built, the DC-3. It wasn't glamorous like the Concorde but it was the workhorse of World War II—top speed of 230 mph. The Air Force called it the C-47 and bought 10,000 of them from Douglas. It didn't fight any battles but it carried several million American soldiers all over the world and I was
one of them. Dozens of DC-3s are still flying in South America sixty-five years after they were built.

They tried to improve the C-47 with the C-46 and it was a dud. I flew in one from India to China and it didn't make me easy knowing they'd lost many of them flying over the Himalayan Mountains, known as “The Hump.” Some joker had scribbled on the wall behind my bucket seat: THIS IS A THING YOU DON'T SEE OF TEN—TWO ENGINES MOUNTED ON A COFFIN.

If anything compares with the DC-3 in longevity, durability and safety, it's the reliable little Piper Cub. It wasn't the Cub's fault that my school friend Charley Wood, the class poet, an artillery spotter, was killed when he was shot down in one in Normandy.

The last airplane so distinctive that I never forgot it was the fourengine 747. A pilot told me it was the best airplane ever built but it was also too expensive to fly.

There was a stairway to an upstairs lounge in the 747 and I was up there on a flight with Jimmy Durante and Jack Nicholson. You don't forget that flight, although Nicholson had a personality I'd like to forget.

I've lost track of airplanes since the 747. They're all the same. The biggest changes were to make the aisles narrower and the seats closer together. Passenger planes used to have aisles wide enough so you could get by the food carts to go to the bathroom.

During World War II, I flew in a B-17 as a reporter on the second 8th AF raid on Germany. My plane, the Banshee, was hit and I was scared stiff but it made a good story.

The British Spitfire was one of the all-time great airplanes. It helped save the British Isles from invasion.

Our best fighter plane then was the P-47s Thunderbolt. It wasn't as maneuverable as the Spit but much more powerful. An American who had been a Spitfire pilot and switched to the P-47 told me it was like the difference between riding a circus pony and straddling a tiger.

I wasn't being shot at during the most dangerous flight I ever took. I spent twenty-nine days in a helicopter flying across the United States
taking pictures for a documentary film called “A Bird's-Eye View of America.” The Sikorsky had two engines and two pilots . . . the best helicopter ever built, but they've never really finished inventing the helicopter. One of our two pilots was killed in a crash shortly after our trip.

Too bad about the Concorde. Like a lot of good things, we could afford it if we didn't waste so much on useless weapons like tanks, battleships, submarines and fighter planes.

Our latest fighter, the F-22 Raptor, costs approximately $133 million—and none of us will ever get a ride in one of those.

Some American companies have names that are so strongly associated with good, dependable products that we unconsciously think well of them when we see the names. We like car companies like Ford or General Motors. They make dependably good products. We trust the cereals made by Kellogg's. We know we'll get an honest deal in stores like Macy's or Saks.

The sound of airline names often evokes the opposite reaction. Many of these names are so strongly associated in our minds with cancelled flights, late arrivals, crowded seating, unpredictable fares and ruined vacations that we have sworn never to buy a ticket on one of them again.

Sometimes you can't avoid flying on an airline you dislike. When a flight attendant thanks everyone on board “for choosing Delta,” “choosing American” or “choosing United,” it rings hollow in the ears of passengers. They didn't choose one airline over the other because they liked it. They chose the airline based on cost or because it was the only one with a flight to the city they had to get to. I clearly remember the excitement of flight just after World War II. It was an adventure, but travel has long since lost its appeal. (It takes much longer to buy a ticket at an
airline counter now that they have computers than it did when everything was done manually.)

I wish there was money for someone to mount an advertising campaign to get people to travel less. I'd like to write headlines for don't-travel ads:

It's hard to understand why so many people so often go to the trouble of getting to places when getting there is almost always an expensive and unpleasant experience.

The Christmas holidays of hundreds of thousands of people are ruined every year because they were trying to go someplace other than home for the holidays. US Airways changed its name from US Air a few years ago but it hasn't changed its ways.

The pilots, flight attendants and mechanics are mostly capable people. I've known a few airline executives and found them to be capable. So why are our airlines terrible? Maybe what they try to do is too difficult to accomplish. Just to begin with, they have to defy the laws of gravity to get the airplanes off the ground loaded with a few hundred people and baggage.

Whatever the reason, I am convinced that more Americans should stay home. Call it a people's strike against the airlines if you want to,
but traveling for fun, if travel involves flight, is an oxymoron. We ought to get over this urge we all have to be somewhere else. There is not a city in the U.S. that has been explored by its residents the way those same people would explore a city in a foreign country. A trip of a few hundred miles by car can take any of us into a new and strange world, and those places ought to be our travel destinations rather than Rome or Paris.

While I have no intention of giving up my day job, I wouldn't mind picking up some extra money. I'm thinking of applying for work as an airport security guard.

My desire is to help President Bush make this nation safe from terrorists. The way I want to help is by patting people down. Up and down, actually. It's apparent that the government feels the principal danger to our nation lies in the lines of Americans waiting to get on airplanes.

Last week, I came through airport security on a trip from New York to Boston. I quickly realized that gray-haired old geezers like me who need help lifting a briefcase up onto the conveyor belt that takes potential weapons through the X-ray machine are high on the security guards' list of suspects.

I could tell right away that the inspectors thought I was trying to sneak something like an atomic bomb on board the plane. They didn't find it with the screening machine but they persisted because they knew I must have it hidden somewhere, so they told me to remove my shoes. I was surprised they considered me so dangerous in view of the fact that two of them said, “Hello, Andy. Love your show,” to me. They must have thought that for me to pose as a person who appears on television would be the perfect cover for a terrorist.

Ahead of me in the line was an attractive, well-dressed young woman. I already had noticed her although it wasn't because she looked suspicious. The security guard gave her special attention, too. She was asked to remove her coat and her jacket, which left her in a nice silk blouse. The security guard, a woman, ran her hand all over the woman. I was impressed with how thorough she was with this suspect.