I fly a lot, and still, this was definitely the weirdest airport I’d ever departed. Most of the time, when you arrive at an airport, the process is fairly straightforward. Check in, either online or with an agent at a desk. Tag and wave farewell to your baggage. Proceed through security, then look at the big screens to find your gate. Wait until your group is called. Board the aircraft, and off you go.
This? Wasn’t that at all. Just a few years ago, I was in Burma (Myanmar), flying to Mandalay from the old domestic airport in Yangon (formerly called Rangoon). Checking in, I was given a handwritten slip, and a sticker with the airline’s logo which, if I remember correctly, was an illustration of a rather fierce-looking dragon. Without any further explanation, the friendly young woman advised me to affix the sticker to my shirt. A young man appeared from nowhere and took my suitcase, walking away with it. I don’t believe that he was wearing any sort of uniform, and didn’t provide a baggage receipt.
Staff directed me to a crowded room where every single person was wearing a sticker, for a half-dozen different airlines. There were no screens in sight, listing departures. Every so often, a ground crew member would stride to the front of the room and hold up a cardboard sign with a flight number written in magic marker. Others walked through the rows of passengers and pointed to those with corresponding stickers. When my sticker was called, we all walked together to the small plane on the tarmac.
Efficient? Definitely not. Interesting? Oh, for sure. As we all know, flying is usually, at best, a fairly unpleasant experience. Flights crammed full, with no overhead space for your carry-on. Delays and cancellations. Tense and often angry passengers. All of this amped-up to a whole other level now, during the stressful holiday season.
But as someone who has taken literally hundreds of flights across every ocean and continent, I can say: Yes, you’ll get turbulence and smelly seatmates and crying babies and terse flight attendants. But every so often, something rather colorful happens—an experience that almost makes the rest of it worthwhile.
Like the time I flew to Zanzibar. I was island-hopping up the coast of Mozambique. Each resort I visited had its own way to get you there—by speedboat, helicopter, or small plane. (On one of the latter, I was the only passenger, and my seatbelt didn’t work, which didn’t deter the pilot from going ahead and taking off as scheduled. “If I say ‘brace,’ just hang on to your hat!” he said with a smile.)
But despite my best efforts, I couldn’t book a ticket for the short hop from the principal Tanzanian city, Dar es Salaam, to tropical Zanzibar. Either my credit card didn’t work, or the website wouldn’t issue the ticket, or nobody would answer the phone. So when I landed in Dar, I sought out booths selling tickets for that next leg of my journey.
Again, it was a strange process. A series of tiny airlines flew this route, and each one had its own little cabin just outside the main airport. After I picked one at random, two employees seated inside, a man and a woman, told me that they could sell me a ticket for a flight leaving soon. So far, so good.
First obstacle: cash only. Once I found an ATM and paid the minimal price, the woman made a notation in a thick binder and handed me a slip that didn’t have my name on it—just the numeral four. To this day, I have no idea why I was assigned that number. Then both stood up. “Let’s go,” said the man.
OK. We’re all going? Where? They asked me to wait by the curb outside, and the man went and fetched a beat-up old Toyota Hilux van. They invited me to sit in the back. Was I being kidnapped? Maybe. But their big smiles and easy manner set me at ease.
After a short drive, we arrived at a fairly ramshackle building. “This is the domestic airport,” the man told me. We entered, but rather than going through metal detectors, we simply walked over the belt on the screening machine. Everyone else was doing the same thing. A military man in fatigues with a machine gun simply nodded to us when we walked by.
A minute later, the driver grabbed my suitcase and disappeared. And the woman walked off in a different direction. And for one terrifying moment, I thought I’d just fallen victim to the world’s most elaborate and ingenious scam. I had no boarding pass, flight number, or proof that I had purchased a ticket. And all of my belongings had just been whisked away.
But then: I looked out on the tarmac and saw my bag being loaded onto a 16-seat propeller plane. The driver returned, introduced me to the pilot, and he personally escorted me to the aircraft. It was already packed with passengers, squeezed into bench seating.
I wedged myself into a spot at the end of a row. Moments later, we were airborne, en route to a beautiful beachy paradise.
And sometimes, you’re just happy to get off the ground. Flying from Antarctica is a truly unique experience. I have departed several times from a military airstrip at a Chilean research base on King George Island (KGI), just off the northern edge of the Antarctic Peninsula. Unpaved and greatly affected by often-inclement weather, landing and leaving here is always an adventure.
But never more than the time I flew from there to Punta Arenas, Chile, amid a maelstrom. I had sailed to KGI after more than three weeks on an expedition ship, visiting wildlife wonders on South Georgia Island and seeing so many penguins, whales, and seals in Antarctica. On the day of our planned departure, a major snowstorm blew in. The flight was canceled. That extra night on the ship was actually rather fun, everyone drinking too much wine and then going out on the stern deck for an epic snowball fight.
The next day, things were touch-and-go. The expedition leader announced that the flight crew, coming down from Punta Arenas, hadn’t yet determined whether the runway on KGI was sufficiently cleared for them to make a safe landing. “Keep you bags packed, put them in the hall, and stay tuned for announcements,” we were told.
We didn’t have to wait long. “The plane is in the air,” he announced, putting into action a previously outlined plan to load us and our bags into Zodiacs. We zoomed over to the island and were hurried toward the runway. Another storm was rolling in.
We rushed up the stairs and piled into the Whisper Jet, a hybrid aircraft, and the cabin door was quickly secured. With haste, the pilot steered us onto the runway. We bumped down it, rocks and sticks kicking up onto the sides of the plane and, apparently, into the engines.
3 Tips to Make Your Flight Experience Better
- Be patient. Before you get testy with a gate agent, take a deep breath, and know they’ve had an even longer, more difficult day than you.
- Sign up for an airline loyalty program, and stick to that airline (or its alliance) as much as possible. Racking up enough points and achieving “status” has definite benefits that make the whole flight experience much easier (including access to VIP lounges and priority boarding).
- Never forget the wonder that is flight—even a few decades ago, reaching heights of 40,000 feet and crossing oceans in a matter of hours were impossible. Flying has made the magic of this world smaller and more accessible, and we should always be grateful for that.
