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June 13, 2003
International Airports
I spotted an item over at mrbarrett.com about the San Jose "international airport" which does not have an e-ticket kiosk. I was going to make a cutting (well attempt it anyway) comment about international airports when I had a quick flashback.
The reason for the cutting remark was my discover that for WWDC (V1.0) I would have to travel to Los Angeles and change for San Jose. There were no flights from Australia to San Jose. Not one. Not much of an international airport! Then WWDC (V2.0) was announced in San Francisco at a more inconvenient time and that ruled out having to sort out the travel.
The flashback was to a time (about 7 years ago) when I was being paid to visit clients around the countryside to iron out performance problems with their Sun (UNIX) servers. One place I had to go on a wee small plane (12 seater from memory but only three passengers) which landed at a so-called "international" airport in country NSW. We got off the plane and wandered over to the only building visible. There was no sign of the baggage so we hung around, there was no sign of anyone, anywhere. The pilot (or co-pilot) came over and unlocked a roller-door, and went into what appeared to be a garage. He came out riding a little tractor (like a ride-on mower) with a baggage cart attached to the back. As he headed out to the plane, the co-pilot (or pilot) opened up the back and chucked (translation: to throw carelessly) the bags on to the trailer. The tractor returned and the driver said: "Help yourselves, the cab will be here in a couple minutes". After collecting out bags he reparked the tractor/trailer, locked up the garage, got back in the plane and took off. The taxi (as in the Highlander: there was only one), did arrive and ran us all into town. Plenty of space because the cab was actually a sort of mini-bus.
I guess after the flashback the lack of an e-ticket booth is probably not enough cause to strip the "international" designation, at least the airport is probably staffed and can handle the baggage :-).
Posted by Ozguru at June 13, 2003 11:06 PM
