A Brief Layover

[ToyMachine]

I had a story written for this month's competition but then I realized I didn't like it and I had no clue how to finish it. I was inspired this week by living in New York and recent current events and wrote this. I think it fits the theme pretty well.

 

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A Brief Layover

 

At 4 AM the airport was nearly empty. By 5:30 AM crowds were accumulating around terminals. A slow but certain packing-in of local commuters, Tokyo-to-New York stopovers, vacationers and airline staff shuffled around the airport. To the untrained eye this was normal Wednesday morning traffic.

 

Like canaries in a mine, the Japanese businessmen were the first to notice it. They started dropping in huge numbers, falling asleep on any unoccupied chair. As some humans prophesy disasters and apocalypses, many more can sense upcoming pains in the asses, and these businessmen were at the forefront of that craft.

 

Sleeping sickness gave way to a second plague: Minor Delays. No planes would be leaving until they could get the problem worked out. “What problem?” asked the commuters. “Solar flares”, said the woman behind the counter. “Satellite interference” said the co-pilot. Ghosts. Gremlins. Aliens in the Third House causing mischief. A family of tourists eyed a Sikh who was yelling into his cell phone.

 

The patriarch of the clan approached the counter as his children brought up the caravan of suitcases and rolling luggage. The California sun was unkind to him. There was a white patch of peeling skin, there a burn in the precise formation of the Red Sea. These and his afflicted nose were getting redder with each minute he waited, hotter with each clerk's rebuff. “We paid good money,” he said, “I have three kids,” and so on, and so forth. Mr. Patrick Dunne, Sr., was not a man that had to wait for something.

 

Mr. Dunne glared at the runway, the clerk, the Sikh, and with a sigh sat down for a game of rummy with the kids. His complexion cooled slightly.

 

A news anchor that happened to be on the plane called her husband and then NBC. “Severe turbulence,” she said, “'exacerbated by multiple component failure. We're f*cked!” You heard it here first, viewers. The pilots of flight #52 MIA-LAX were instructed to maintain their course by handheld instruments and dead reckoning. “A wreck could ruin us,” said the fleet manager. The pilots and passengers agreed.

 

As flight #52 crossed into the Pacific Time zone, the sun rose on the laid over travelers. On the flight status screens, the cool blue “Minor Delay” markers had been replaced by the more menacing, red “Delayed”. It had been forty-five minutes since a plane took off from Los Angeles International Airport. Like clockwork one of the businessmen started awake, glanced at the flight schedule, and fell back asleep.

 

Some commuters had thrown in the towel, called in late and started drinking early. The drone of the TV mingled with the flat drinks like a grown-up lullaby. Then, an alarm woke them up. A news alert! “Electrical Failure At 40,000 Feet: More After This.” Ominous. A bleary-eyed anchor laid out the facts as they were: a routine incident, trained pilots, secure passengers. The Threat Level indicator quaked with yellow fear. “Delays at LAX and surrounding airports,” said the reporter, “are expected to continue throughout the day.”

 

News of the delays spread through the airport like a power surge; the travelers, jolted to action, stood up and waited in line to complain. Mr. Dunne, predictably, was bright crimson and swollen with renewed fury.

 

As Mr. Dunne raged, the other flyers gathered to air their grievances to a more sympathetic audience. One man claimed he was “losing a hundred grand every minute I'm stuck in this hellhole”, while those who hadn't seen the news report speculated on the delays. Hijacking theories took prominence, though some found a massive food vendor conspiracy beneath it all, and one eccentric charted airline disappearances and concluded extraterrestrial forces were at work.

 

Then, suddenly as the rabble had started up, a disembodied voice silenced them all. The general manager of LAX had the voice of practiced calm and force. “A plane has suffered a temporary malfunction. The flight is en route and will attempt an unaided landing, if the problem has not been fixed. Because of the hazards involved, the runways have been cleared and outbound flights have been suspended.”

 

The voice of authority seemed to mollify the travelers. They glanced through the large glass windows at the sky. The apologetic voice continued, “confident in our pilots' skill,” promising “vouchers or refunds” to affected parties. The Sikh and his turban seemed less menacing, now. The more savvy travelers filled out compensation forms. Only the family and friends of the passengers on inbound flight #52 still worried.

 

By the time the plane had descended past the cloud cover, the lights in the cabin had been turned back on, and the passengers sedated with complementary drinks. The head pilot, one David Johnson, was as experienced as all sources claimed. “I've been in worse spots before,” he said to the co-pilot, “this one's gonna be a breeze.” His co-pilot said, “I can't find the landing gear.”

 

“What the hell do you mean?!” David yelled, and started panicking at 4,000 feet.

 

As seen through the windows of the Los Angeles International Airport and the hopeful lenses of three international news corporations, flight #52 failed to deploy its landing gear, dove nose-first into the tarmac, and exploded into bits. The fleet manager rubbed his eyes, swore, and thought about updating his resume.

[Eminence]

I enjoyed the satirical nature of this, with the management's responses and the news report. The description was, as always with your pieces, smooth and flowing.

 

Two things I was wondering. The first, relating to the competition, was where exactly this fits in under the theme - I may just be blind, but I couldn't really link it in strongly. Secondly, and this is only nit-picking, but would such a large airport be virtually empty at 4:30 in the morning? I thought they were largely 24 hour operations; especially the major ones.