Zombies at Newark Airport

 Like so many my family and I were sidelined from traveling due to the pandemic.  We do not travel often throughout the year, we usually have one big family vacation.  We have been fortunate to be able to do these in Europe, with and without friends, in the last few years.  As we were planning our 2020 trip, Covid was planning on world domination.  Covid 1 - Humanity 0 … until … vaccines, lockdowns, meltdowns, conspiracies, masks, social distancing, wash your hands (eww really that took a pandemic to normalize?  Just eww), 6 feet distance, vaccine passports…. I will not mention murder hornets and other bizarre things that also occurred.  We all watched them, from our homes, where we were stuck.  

So much like many of you, across the globe, the time finally came where we felt we could travel again, no fear of getting stuck someplace (though I for one could have been ok w being quarantined in say Italy or Spain), not knowing what was protocol on the other end or when we came back.  We waited and then we planned, we are planners, we used a travel agent - more on that later and we chose Ireland.  A place that we had not been,  relatively fast flight and everyone we told about our upcoming trip, and who had been, unanimously told us we would love it and the people …. Oh the people were amazing.  We heard some of the jokes about the food, boiled .. etc.. who cares we find ways around food. Spoiler alert, we did not need to find ways the food was very good. 

The day finally came and we were on our way or so we thought … we got to Newark, after finding a really useful long term parking lot where drop off was smooth, and we walked into what might be called chaos at best.  There had been storm activity, so ok I kind of got it.  Our first issue - there are NO human being check ins at United.   NONE.  Not like 1.  Not even for First Class.  There are ..kiosks.  There are people who can help you with the kiosk.  We could not log in to print our boarding passes and luggage tags, there are people who take your luggage once you add your tag BUT they cannot actually help you print a boarding pass or a luggage tags.  Read that again .. they can take the luggage with the luggage tags you self printed but they cannot help you print.  Kiosk helpers will come over and of course “help you” use the machine, if you used an ATM you can use this, but our kiosk helper informed us that she “did not understand what our issue was so wait on line?” I asked “what line?” The one by  gate 11, we were at 6.  That’s where we could find customer service .. for United this is an oxymoron.  

We had time we figured as we started to walk toward gate 11, we look up, our flight is delayed by an hour.. and then we saw the line, it was at least 3 hours long.  I kid you not, I do not exaggerate.  At this point I am desperately just trying to find someone who can print out boarding passes.  One person tells me to wait on the Pet Check in line.. cause yes they have PEOPLE to check those in. Her manager overhearing says I cannot do that and gives me a card to call a number to .. don’t know what.   I call our travel agent, Aliki is wonderful, and who is finding it hard to believe the scene I am describing about what we are seeing.  People are packed and this is just check in.   She tells me she will call me back and she does with a United agent on the phone, who tells me to find someone at a customer service desk, I eye rolled but saw a small desk with a man who promptly halted my trek toward him with a hand up and a “I do not print boarding passes and I am not working” but yet he was an employee and it was a buzz of people, looking lost and frustrated, that surrounded him.  My Astoria girl inner self was about to slap that hand held up toward me but my older self took a breath and walked away.  

I look around and see another of these small desks and rush over, to get “I have not had lunch I am going on my break”..I feel for you dude, lunch after 5 pm is well .. sucks… but I just need boarding passes.  I have him talk to the United person on phone and he reluctantly prints our passes and tells a woman holding a small baby in front of us who is asking for help “not working anymore .. lunch”.  I send the kid with me to go get husband and other kid who have been on line, which has barely moved during this 30 minute adventure, to come as we have what we need. 

We take our luggage to the line to hand in to a person, and we are ready for security which in all fairness works well.  We get to our gate, through masses of people, which is where we start to get a little worried.  It has stopped raining hours before, but this .. in all my many years of travel this was like Penn station or a subway on a Friday at rush hour.  Yet it is not the frantic “ready, set, go” of that .. there is a weird throng of people just looking for ..direction or something.  This would get more pronounced. 

Our plane at this point is now 2 hours delayed, boys go to get food, and I notice that across over 20 gates there are no, not one, none gate agents.  NONE.  Never saw this in my life before. I start eavesdropping, but of course I do,  and I am hearing “been here for 3 days..” “not sure when I am leaving..” “no one seems to know anything”.  This is a high traffic airport .. how are there no gate agents, how are we the passengers staring, as if it is a deity, at screens that keep flashing Delayed and new times..there was no one there, it was like a Zombie movie, minus anyone eating other people.  People just staring at the screens, wandering, talking to one another and still no United gate agents or personnel anywhere to be found.  

Our 7:20 pm flight went to 8:40 to 9:30 to 10:00… and poof suddenly a gate change.  Why ?  No one can tell you .. people were there for days from conversations we had with various people, days.. one young woman, 19 year old, from California told me that she had been there since Saturday (it was Monday) and the night before she was told by a United agent, they do exist?, to “go find a hotel” in Newark… as if even that is possible in relation to the airport (or if it is, it will be a pay by the hour joint w coin massager and sticky carpet).   She went into Manhattan and called her dad to pay for a room she could ill afford.   She was missing a teen tour, or parts of it.  She was hoping to make it out to France that night.. I do not know if she did.  

As we trudged through the airport to the new gate, which was not near of course to where we were, we looked at the sad empty gate terminals, deserted or abandoned, yet mobbed with passangers.  Were we trapped in this place, with lots of high sodium food? We would not be so picky later on.. msg we loved you if you were only open to be bought hours later. 

We chatted with other passengers from our flight, they too had never seen anything this bad.  This is when we were introduced to the “time out”.   What is this you say ?  So apparently there is a rule, not a new rule, but somehow now a followed rule where a crew cannot work more than certain amount of hours before “timing out”.   Now I am all about a rested pilot, I do not want the dozer, the nodder at the helm in the sky .. but this rule is not applied to actually working time, but just time when you are assigned to a flight (or some crazy equation).  So even if they are not  “working” or flying they were sitting there, timing out.  Wait what?  Then you had to find more crew people to replace them, like there are oodles of these people..there are not.   The pilots were not only ones impacted, the crew and the flight attendants would also apparently time out, and here is the irony, faster then the pilots.  Now this madness was starting to make sense, ok not sense but these delays were compounded by these time outs.  If you think this is a joke, a bad SNL skit, a Communist airport circa 1973 .. you are wrong.. this is Newark.  The zombies aka passengers, looking at the flashing screens for an ongoing change of times.. gates… or worse.. CANCELLED… learning about this time out and yet no one seems to have accounted for any of this at United.

We moved to our third gate it is now 1:45 in the morning.  There are cots being handed out, apparently behind a blue pop up screen there are United employees but they cannot answer any questions.  The cots are gross, not like ooh they look uncomfortable gross, gross as is in there are visible, unidentifiable stains on these brown cots.  Maybe they borrowed them from the motel I mentioned above, by the hour.  People take them, they cover the part that will touch their face, we will not fall that low .. yet.   We are tired, it has been hours, the food shops are closed.. the bar is serving but you cannot ask for a drink you must scan a QR code to order it .. zombie apocalypse. 

There is finally a plane, there is a crew, wait there are ..gate agents.  They do not know when we are leaving.. they think we will.  There is hope, there is always hope, even in the glass eyed, dark circled, grey tinged faces that have seen none up to now.  We wonder to one another if we should wake the cot sleepers. Hope..is a dangerous thing as we learned in Shawshank.

A pilot comes out at the gate .. he has timed out.  He is the first employee willing to at least explain the time out thing, after all he only has some of us, some are sleeping, many have given up trying to understand and they just watch the words come out of his mouth, a lack of understanding on their pallid faces.  

I ask “is this a new rule?” I have traveled for almost 50 years.. I have not heard of it before I do not add.  He shakes his head “been around for many years.. but..well now we enforce it more”.  WHAT?!!! 

At 2:30 am we were told they found a crew, a whole crew, from a cancelled flight from Dubai.  Now as we had all watched the screens we also realized the flight scheduled after us for 945 was set to take off.. before us.  Why?  Apparently not a lot pilots are trained on 777s but on 757s, which is the one the other flight was using, there were more.  Also we are watching cancellations for the next day, delays, this is a time loop that appears to have no end.  If this sounds like a Monty Python skit, well you might be right there too.  

We waited, like we were Swifties about to see TS herself, looking anxiously for the crew.. looking at our watches…we need to be in the air.. we could not time out, we need to get the out of this airport. 

At last they came, looking mighty rested I have to add, we applauded.  I am serious.  Your humanity becomes basic quickly, the smallest things will make you ecstatic.   There is also something about how much we as humans will become a group when sharing a misery, people who may not have previously made eye contact are encouraging one another, we are in this together.  We have been here for hours, a couple of people for days.  We met the nicest young woman, she needed to get to work, she was from Dublin.  She had an understanding boss but still she was already at least 2 days past her return to office date. 

At 3:30 am we are finally called.. dare we .. are we? WE ARE..we are boarding.  Suddenly we are the gate, with agents, checking people in .. and my youngest son’s boarding pass has an issue. Yes the one they printed for him. Apparently it looks like he has no ticket, he is holding one, a boarding pass but the computer says he is not … again WHAT? I go to ask for help, the woman tells me she has to call.. and that could take a while as she has been on hold for over an hour.  I am getting on that plane, I am planning on making a run for it, the other woman who was checking in says “don’t worry we will let you on” but will you I wonder in my head? Are they even real employees? We have not seen gate agents until this gate, this hour.. I hear the Twilight Zone music “a family that thinks they are headed for vacation suddenly finds themselves landing in the ….Twilight Zone”. 

There is a voice on the other line, the issue is being fixed. Can it be? He has a new boarding pass. We are on our way.  Ok it was awful but we are boarding, the plane smell is hitting us and for the first, and probably only time, I welcome it. 

We get our seats, people are tired, the lights are dimmed.  They play the safety video, and people around me start nodding off.  I am a plane sleeper, I can pass out no problem but something is not letting me, I am pacing a bit, I am watching, I am looking at my watch.. tick tock…please do not time out I am praying to a deity I do not even think exists, I am sending it into the universe, which is nonsense I am tired, I am soo tired.  We have been on the plane for almost 2 hours.. take off already I plead in my head.

“Ladies and gentlemen.. “nnoooooo I want to scream, the slumbering zombie passengers start to rouse..what is happening?  My family is half asleep, my husband might be getting up.  “They timed out..they fucking timed out..” that is what I say.  I do not care that there are older people and children around me.. fuck is all I want to scream.  WHY did you sit on this tarmac.. because I am hearing all around me, this happens, they find something to do and time out.  Is this true? A QAnon theory? WHYYYYY?????  How can they treat human beings like this, with airline prices at all time highs.  Knowing they got a boatload of money from the pandemic to stay in business, my money and your money.  I want to stand on the seat, Norma Rae style, and shout Hell NO. I will not… I get my family moving. 

We trudge off, it is now morning in Newark, it is almost 6 am.. they tell us to go to get our luggage the flight is now officially canceled.  Did I mention that if you wanted to leave earlier you could be considered a no show and lose your paid for ticket? Did I mention that the line was over 9 hours long to get to the sole customer service agent for all of these flights? Probably not, because I am tired just remembering this. 

We go downstairs and it is the luggage zombie room.. just rows of luggage, taken off planes and one woman who tells us that no one knows which plane luggage belongs to a flight. One woman is asking about her wedding dress that they made her check in, the response a snarky “yeah well I got people with heart medication in these bags and they’re not getting it so you will not be getting a dress”.  A dress? IT’s the woman’s wedding dress.  The snark employee leaves behind sealed doors, there are yellow cards stacked that we should take to call about our luggage.  We all look at each other, wish our luggage could talk and identify itself. 

Our family decides to go home.  We are tired, we are drained, emotionally abused.  We have other commitments we cannot keep changing vacation time, we have work, we will lose a lot of money if we cancel (get the travel insurance people, I know I will).  We get our car 9 days early, we drive home.  Stunned, tired, whispers of “they can’t do this to people” are repeated as they were echoing throughout Newark.  

We get home it is now 7:30 am .. the next day.  Already lost a day.  I call the travel agent - she is shocked, my story pours out as I lay on my bed, fighting a tiredness that is paired with sadness.   She tells me she will try to call and get a new flight that day.. I am not hopeful but I thank her. 

She calls back, we have a person on, she can.. get us on a flight.  There are no storms predicted on this day. At 945 pm, that is the flight that made it out the day before.  I haven’t slept in over 24 hours, I am grasping at this like it is the lifeline we cannot let go off.   We are on the flight.  Our luggage appears to have gone to Dublin .. via cargo plane I am told.  I am too tired to fight this.  Aliki doesn’t buy it, she and I are on the phone on hold for almost 4 hours..and then they hang up.  We will deal later, I must sleep, I need to, I am ..out.

I wake up, dubious family goes along with new plan.  Props to all 3 of them, especially my teenage boys who at no point did more than share the frustration we had, all of us in that airport, Dante’s 7th level of hell. 

We can log in on the app, we have boarding passes, we go to the airport.  It still really crowded.  It is sunny out.  We see people from the night before, it is really crowded I notice again.  Departure is on time, according to the boards.  It is 2 hours before take off…and BOOM we are delayed.  We are thinking positive, damn it, we have a gate change.  We trudge, we have another 30 minutes added to our delay. No.. we will not succumb to the negativity that is threatening all of us.  The customer service line was 15 hours, we hear from those brave warriors to were on it to get a new seat. THANK YOU ALIKI for getting us this flight I am thinking. 

There are people for an LA flight at the gate next to us, they get on.. they are taken off.. timed out.  There are gate agents at least tonight, they seem more lost than the passengers. There is another gate change.  I am a director of operations. I know process.  I work for a big corporation.  I ask the gate agent “Do you have an operations group?” He smiles, slightly scared of where I am going “Yeah but they are in Chicago” “That should not matter, you all need to have contingency plans, we have them, we are mandated to have them, how do you not have plans for this whole time out process?”.  He leans closer and says quietly “they stink, they don’t care, sorry”.  I am sad for him, I am appalled with United.  I am angry, but I need to stay calm, I am not going viral on Tik Tok for losing my shit in Newark. 

They move us to a gate across the way, we are delayed, the agent moves, 30 min later they move us back to the other side.  The plane in back of him.. is not the plane, someone made a mistake and put a plane that just landed in back of us.. we are going to lose the crew.  I cannot meet anyone’s eye, I cannot tell my family what I know.  I am getting broken, I just want a vacation with my family.  

We are moved to another gate and they cannot find the plane.  You misplace a phone, a pen, keys..BUT A PLANE??  Who is running this place?  Twilight Zone .. again. 

It is midnight.  We are delayed to 1:30..the cots are back.  People have lost whatever tinge of life they had on their skin, they are shaking their heads, asking each other for affirmation that this is not normal that it might end, that we all will somehow not be stuck in Newark for life.  

Along with the gate agent is now another female employee, I do not know her function because she does not appear to do anything on the computer and she is nasty and unpleasant in response to every question asked of her. I think what is wrong with you there is no need.. too bad.. it is your job and people have not been nasty, they want to know, just want to know are we taking off.  The woman in front of me starts to cry, I ask if I can hug her and she falls into my arms.  She has missed her wedding, they will lose 90,000 British pounds, her wedding dress which they made her check in, is lost.  I let her cry, her mom calls her and she says “I am still here..this nice lady is holding me Mamma”.  It breaks me, I start to cry, I am tired, I am angry, I am powerless. 

I spy the plane being brought to the gate, is there a crew? When do they time out? Why do I need to know this? How did we get to this? WE look like those disaster movies you see where the country is being evacuated and the airport is madness, only we do not have any more energy for madness, we are the lobotomized cuckoo’s nest, just eyes darting, time out running through our brains. 

We get on … we are on.  People are celebrating, quietly, not me.  I am not going to do that until those wheels are tucked in and we are airborne.  Come on, I will the door to close.  Come on…..it closes.. come on.. there can’t be traffic to go.. come on.. we have 45 minutes, I know I asked about when the time out is - I am an operations person I would have planned for that, to be in the air. 

We are on the runway, come on, 20 minutes.  We are..airborne. 

We land.. we are finally in Ireland.  Our luggage according to the app is there, but it is not. We fill out a report, I am still battling things with the report number.  We only have one day in Dublin now, we ask for luggage to be delivered to the next hotel because we do not have any faith that it will make it before we leave after today.  We are right, it will take 3 more days.  We are a family who loves our vacations, so we go to our Guinness tour and ask for a new time since ours has past due to the delays, the Irish are amazing, they are as nice as we have heard.  We find our hop on hop off bus tickets, the stop is right outside the Guinness factory (which has an amazing top floor bar), we get on and we embark on what will be one of the great holidays we have taken together.  We are wearing our same clothes for a few days, our tops cheesy Guinness and Trinity college gear that we buy so we have something to wear, our toothbrushes free ones from hotel, but we are together and the Irish people are amazing. 

Next week I will take you through our trip…by now you are tired, probably, we were bone tired, that night we slept well…we have not yet forgiven nor will we forget the inhumane, incompetency of United…but they will not be the memory, the trip will be.