31 July 2000
The flight I took to get back to the homeland was quite the experience, as anyone who has ever flown with Sun Country can probably attest. First off, Sun Country flights are relegated to a far-flung terminal of the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport that more closely resembles a bus station from 1972 than anything that can reliably send one on one's way via a form of transit that involves the seeming defiance of laws of gravity. I had been joking with J. on the way to the airport that for such a short flight I'd probably be on a two-seater prop plane. As we pulled up to the terminal and took in it's 1955 World's Fair "Transportation of the Future" exhibit-style architecture, I said "Wow, looks like I really will be on that two-seater." We both laughed weakly, as if we weren't entirely sure that wasn't the case.
The bus station analogy held up inside the terminal as well-- there were people asleep on the benches that filled the flatly-lit, windowless, carpeted waiting area, kids running around yelling, and more than a few self-satisfied mullet-ed men. Most of the people there were either waiting for one the the two flights that were late in arriving, or in the middle of a four-hour delay for a departing flight. I sat and read the paper, dearly hoping that I wouldn't end up in a similar plight as the latter.
They began to board our flight about 20 minutes late. After the "people with kids" boarding call, I had a moment of fear when I overheard an exchange between two of the Sun Country employees. Apparently, some of the people on our flight were connecting from a flight from L.A. That flight was late, and scheduled to arrive at 7:30pm. It was currently about 5:30pm. "Why are we boarding people?" "What?" "The flight from L.A. isn't here." Me: "Oh, fuck." Thankfully, they decided to proceed as planned and conveniently ignore the people from L.A.
Once everyone was boarded and seated, we began to taxi. And taxi. And taxi some more. We stopped at an intersection of runways to let two big jets pass. Then we taxied some more. I thought we were going to taxi all the way to Milwaukee. We literally drove around the airport for twenty minutes, occasionally stopping to let other planes cross our path. If the second-class status of Sun Country hadn't already been established by the bus station terminal, the fact that our little 727 had to yield the right-of-way to all of Northwest's big beautiful jets pretty much finished the job. I could just hear the pilots: "Pleeeeeease let us take off... PLEEEEASE! We just want to borrow the runway for a MINUTE. Please! We won't be a bother, I promise. Well, okay... I guess we can taxi around for a little while longer."
Once the flight actually got into the air, I ceased to have anything to be snarky about. It was actually rather nice: I had a row of three seats all to myself, and all the crying babies were at least 10 or 15 rows ahead of me. I had some pretzels and soda, listened to Lamb on my discman, and then landed. 45-minute flights don't really give you a chance to get bored. I found Laura and Eric waiting for me at the gate, and that was that.