The winter holiday season has never been conducive to Bricole (everyone’s favorite celebrity couple) getting to where they want to be. The unfortunate thing about the holidays is that a large swath of the population insists on traveling during them. As for Bricole getting from Los Angeles to Newark, this was actually not too bad this year. Sure, I had a rolling mechanical delay, an aircraft swap, and security eventually had to remove a woman from the aircraft for being well . . .Jersey, but two hours later I was enroute on a Christmas Eve redeye in Polaris class.
I made it to New Jersey in between winter storms with another system arriving on Boxing Day. While not as large as originally anticipated, it had no problem covering everything in six inches of snow. It made for some scenic pictures of small town New Jersey. As our departure date arrived, all seats going from Newark to Houston disappeared as did the seats to really everywhere else. I don’t know if it was a backlog of flight issues from the previous storm, but it seemed odd that everyone would be traveling on a Monday to get back home or elsewhere. Inspired by Nicole’s JSX discovery last year, I searched the most obscure airlines in my benefits to get us out of the Northeast.
The most promising option seemed to be Avelo, an airline that is so successful with its business model, that it has closed Burbank, its most successful hub and resorted to deportation flights for the Trump administration. Its strong business model resulted in nearly 30 seats to Houston’s Hobby — about 30 seats more than any other flight, but we would have to drive to Connecticut. Easy enough, or so it seemed. The weather showed light rain in the morning — clearing in the afternoon. With our flight scheduled for 2:15pm, I didn’t anticipate major delays. I was quite wrong. The drive itself was a bit stressful. Traffic between Newark airport and Connecticut was never good — taking nearly three hours to get to New Haven. Avelo said they had a one hour before flight check-in rule, which is probably not seriously enforced, but you never know. Luckily the delays in our driving through fog, rain, and traffic seemed immaterial as our flight continued to be delayed.
We returned the rental car without issue, and went to check-in at what can only be described as trailers joined together to form some semblance of a structure. New Haven acts as a sort of base for Avelo with numerous flights going all sorts of random places — Mosinee, Wisconsin or maybe an impromptu trip to Honduras for example. Not a single one had departed or arrived the entire day and the check-in area seemed testy. People exclaimed there were four to five hour waits to get on the phone with the company. Bricole, were issued seats right away in an exit row — essentially the best seats you’re going to get on Avelo, an otherwise no frills carrier that will either get you to Orlando for cheap or maybe even Panamá for free.
We couldn’t even get into the main terminal building (separate from check-in) because it was at capacity and they would only allow people who were on the immediate next flight. It seems that Avelo has a policy of not dispatching an aircraft from its origin unless there’s a virtual guarantee of landing at its planned destination. I guess diversions really screw up their business model especially if they have to pay for hotels for the crew or worry about judicial injunctions catching up with them. This is very different from a normal airline like mine which would slap an alternate airport on our flight plan and send us out on time based on forecasts showing that the bad weather at present might not be so bad after a 3-4 hour flight. I would argue this works a lot better for everyone involved.
We decided to wait it out in the arrivals hall (another building) where we could sort of find a corner and shiver together. These impromptu terminal buildings constructed in the latest container-chiq are poorly heated. There was no food to be acquired anywhere with the exception of a vending machine. Once we realized we were delayed four hours from our original flight time due to the fog in the northeast, we had to find something. We went for a stroll through the residential neighborhood to an Italian deli, which was . . .closed. I ended up getting empanadas from a food truck outside the terminal. They were a bit overpriced, but that guy knows what he has. Nicole eventually got a croissant from the main terminal.
Whatever you’re picturing about the New Haven airport terminal, picture it so much worse. There is no space. The TSA checkpoint takes up about 70% of the terminal space with the rest of it filled with wall-to-wall people in varying stages of decay. There aren’t actually open spaces, just narrow corridors or hallways leading directly to one of its three gates. This isn’t even taking into account the 300 or so people waiting outside the terminal in the elements waiting for the privilege to go through the TSA checkpoint.
Considering how annoyed Nicole and I were about the whole situation, I feel like we were the calmest people. The folks in line for the Vero Beach flight seemed downright hostile. An old woman was chatting me up about the situation and I remarked that it was a little “chaotic.” She rolled her eyes and said, “Chaotic is a nice way of putting it.” After pushing forward passed the Vero Beach crowd to finally board our flight, we were struck by the number of people who simply aborted the line and began walking toward the exits — including two people who had gotten as far as the boarding ramp before coming back down. I couldn’t figure that out.
Anyway, we settled into our spacious exit row and sort of relaxed. Would I go to New Haven again? Things would have to be extraordinarily bad elsewhere to result in this choice, which I suppose is why we ended up in this situation to begin with. It is quite possibly the worst airport I have ever set foot in—which is a hard thing to do considering its lack of space. It has no business taking on this volume of traffic inside a terminal building that can barely handle one flight much less a dozen. And there was no priority pass lounge. Unbelievable! 0/10. Would not return. But as Nicole stated eloquently, “Who does this? Who goes to this airport? Who flies this airline? . . . Well none of the people who are here after today.”
passports & pepto bismol 