How a theoretically uneventful flight to Miami, 1st leg of a new trip to Haiti, became a nightmare in the hyperborean wilds of the snow-bound North, better known as Kennedy Airport in NYC, and how I went from ice to fire (metaphorically speaking) to reach Port-au-Prince.
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I had even taken the day off on February 3rd to give myself enough time to pack carefully, because I could have worked a half-day; my flight from Norfolk to Miami was not until 4:25 PM. My biggest concern was making sure I packed all the appropriate camera equipment and accessories I would need, chargers, cables, batteries, memory cards, manuals, particularly since I was bringing my brand new Canon Rebel T1i DSLR camera. I had hardly broken it in, actually still figuring out how to use it, but I had finally decided I needed it in Haiti for long shots and crisper closeups than my Nikon Coolpix could provide. So this trip would be a hands-on learning experience too.
I was flying back to Haiti again with well-known independent journalist Georgianne Nienaber, who has been covering the Haiti beat as well as anyone since the great earthquake of January 12th last year that killed perhaps over 300,000 thousand Haitians while rendering homeless over another million and a half, figures hard to totally validate, but solid surmises nonetheless. Georgianne had also begun exposing the lies and ineptitude surrounding the cholera epidemic that began sweeping through Haiti last October, exacerbated by bureaucracy, callousness, coverups and ineptitude.
I had gone with Georgianne last May to, among other thing, investigate the earthquake refugee camps in a four-day whirlwind tour of Port-au-Prince and outlaying areas. It had been a colorful and exciting experience, and I had learned firsthand why so many travelers fall in love with the Haitian people despite it all, despite the poverty, overcrowding, hunger, corruption and chaos. And I was eager to return.
Now, as my wife dropped me off at the Norfolk International Airport around 3 PM for my American Airlines flight, I was less than 24 hours away from said return, an easy flight, a night in Miami and on into Port-au-Prince by Noon the next day. Or so I thought.
My first inkling that something might be wrong came when I tried to scan my online print-out barcode at the AA expedited boarding Self-Service Machine. Nothing was happening. A ticket agent, noticing how flummoxed I certainly looked, came over to show me how to do it. Now we were getting a message, but not a very reassuring one, to paraphrase: You are 24 hours early, come back tomorrow. Huh?
Quicker than you can say "the airports of America are disfunctional", the ticket agent was back at her computer terminal looking for answers. "Ahh, your flight has been canceled, but you can still catch it tomorrow."
The long and icy fingers of the snow blizzards sweeping through Chicago and now the northeast had apparently affected me too, but I was too busy explaining to the ticket agent WHY I had to be in Haiti tomorrow afteroon, not recycling myself through Norfolk International again. Finally the light bulb went off and she began searching for some way to get me to Miami tonight. After one failed attempt to send me, via US Airways, to, gasp, LaGuardia, where the rats are purported to carry switchblades, to catch an evening flight from NYC to Miami, a plan that fell through because the flight to LaGuardia had been delayed, she came back with a connecting flight via Delta to another direct flight from the Big Apple to Miami, this time through, whew, Kennedy International.
Good old Delta I smiled as I trekked over to their terminal to catch Flight 6090 leaving at 5:09 and arriving at 7, plenty of time to catch AA Flight 1687 departing NYC at 8. Or, again, so I thought.
About an hour and a half later than scheduled, thrice-delayed Delta 6090 finally took off into the frigid night. No, I wasn't nervous, I kept telling myself as I slouched in my plane seat across from another cat in the same boat as myself - forgot his name, but he had to catch a deep-sea fishing boat in Miami at 7:00 AM and he WAS nervous, already cussing under his breath and rolling his eyes. He had dark forebodings.
It is amazing how a pilot can shrink an almost two hour flight into less than an hour by pushing on those throttles, because the pilot still planned to get us to Kennedy by 7:15 or so, and damned if he wasn't doing it! Closer and closer we flew; hope was springing eternally within me as I kept telling my vexed friend that we really would make it. And THEN the magic carpet aerial tour of the bright lights of New York/New Jersey began.
The Kennedy Flight Control Tower had a bit of a traffic jam it seemed. Please commence holding pattern, Delta 6090. Now I am getting worried, despite those big, luxurious sweeping 180 degree turns that take in such a grand view of, in turn as the plane rolls, first the panoramas of multitudinous roof tops, lamp posts and thousands of cars driving along the snow-inundated streets below, then the endless blackness and grayness of the night sky above as your window suddenly tilts toward Venus.
After two complete holding patterns costing us another ten minutes, now the Tower told us we could proceed to land, but from the opposite approach than was normally authorized for our flight, in other words the "long way", which afforded yet another languid, splendid view of the city from the rarefied heights (God New York is BIG). Finally after what seemed a full length Francis Ford Coppola movie, we were touching down on the tarmac, and, a few bounces later, rolling along at a slow, slow taxi headed toward what?
I looked out the window while my friend looked as happy as a man who had just been visited by Greek Harpies. I could see snow a foot deep just beyond the tarmac, disappearing past fences into the darkness. From another window across from me I could see glimpses of terminals and parked planes in the distant glow of airport lights.
Slowly the plane taxied on in search of a terminal parking space. The two of us had already been forewarned that getting into Kennedy was only half the battle. The other half would be getting to American Airlines Concourse 8. Take the Air Train we had been told.
It was 15 minutes to 8 when the plane finally parked and the passengers began offloading. This was one of those smaller planes that was too small to even hold larger carry-on luggage, so I told my friend to reconnoiter ahead while I waited for the ground crew to dig out my bag. Catching up to him we now both, like a two-wolf pack, hunted for the Air Train and someone who could call American to tell them to hold our flight. "We can't call another airline on our phone", an airline employee grimaced as we begged him.
Lost in transition in Kennedy International Airport (all photos by Mac McKinney)
Beginning to feel really despondent now, we still raced on, up and down stairwells, escalators and through corridors, finally find ourselves on the platform for the Air Train. "It's still not 8:00!" I shouted, yeah, more like 7:55. "What concourse are we at?" I asked someone. "One," came the reply. Damn
Suffering through the concourse prime numbers 1, 2, 3, 5 and 7, not to mention 4 and 6, we were at last flying through the train doors, across a street, through more doors and up into Concourse 8, a long AA ticket counter with a line of people looming ahead of us. A Puerto Rican-looking woman sporting an official American Airlines blazer caught our eye as we raced toward her, shouting at her to hold our flight. "What flight? "
"Flight 1687 to Miami."
"Oh that left ten minutes ago, and they closed the doors at 7:50." I looked at my watch, 8:08. The plane actually left on-time if not early! How's that for irony during a snow storm I thought.
So here I was where I had started at 3 o'clock, standing in front of an AA ticket counter, even hundreds of miles farther away from Miami than before. My friend and I slowly parted now as we bartered and begged for early flights to Miami. He was screwed. No way could he get to Miami by early morning, so he settled on a hotel room for the night and a later flight, while I pulled out all the stops to make my 10:05 Haiti Flight. Good thing I had a media badge, provided by OpEdNews, that served to reinforce my arguments that I had important interviews in Haiti in the afternoon. My ticket agent was an angel - she eventually got me first standby status on a 5:45 AM direct flight to Miami, touching down around 9:00.
"Can I get a hotel room for the night" I queried.
"It's really not worth it," she replied. "By time you catch the shuttle, get checked in at a hotel, get to bed, then recatch the shuttle back to the airport, you are only going to get a few hours sleep. Might as well just sleep in the airport."
She was right. It was already approaching 10 after the long wait and then negotiations at the ticket counter. Grasping my boarding pass, I thanked her, went through the bloody security gauntlet yet again, then wondered into the official concourse itself.
Inside Concourse 8
I was hungry and began to roam around for dinner, though wary of the fast food joints. Finally I found an O'Neal's Restaurant near my departure gate, seven, where you could sit and relax at a real table with a waiter.
They were about to close the kitchen, so I would be the last customer, ordering a veggie burger and fries. I made some more phone calls to Georgianne and my wife, since I had been giving them a running account of my travel tribulations. I had gotten Georgianne pretty worried, worried to the point where she had pondered canceling the whole trip, but now I told her I felt pretty confident I would get to Miami in time. At least one standby almost always gets on a flight I reasoned.
Pulling out my camera, I began to take photos of the artistic decor of O'Neal's, which was impressive, as you can see in the following photos, and then I eventually finished up and wandered back into my vast bedroom, Concourse 8, taking a few more shots before "retiring", verticallly, for the night into a chair near some AC outlets, so I could recharge my laptop and cell phone while I "slept."
Behind the ornate art-deco iron work lies the bar section of O'Neal's
Ceiling decor
Art deco closeup
Back into Concourse 8, there are still a handful of people waiting for the very last flight of the night.
Maybe dreaming of her will help me sleep better.
There is nothing quite like trying to doze off while sitting in an airport armchair as Muzak plays on relentlessly through the night, so I slept fitfully and sporadically hour after hour, various pop tunes that spanned the decades continuously accosting my ears.
This is how you do it at Kennedy International, a gal dozing while waiting for the last flight of the night.
At 1:00 AM an airport security type approached me, explaining that the concourse actually closes at 1, while I retorted that I had an early morning flight. He said he would see if my staying was OK with his supervisor, and since he never came back, I guess it was.
The concourse is all but empty now after 1:00 AM, save for janitorial crews.
First arrival flight of Friday morning
Around 4:00 AM passengers began trickling into Gate 7, rousting me out of "bed". Then all of a sudden they all, more or less, got up together and left. The gate must have just been changed I figured. I found a nearby departure display board. Yep, now Flight 1141 had been reassigned to Gate 47. More trekking about the concourse! Finally I was sitting, along with a steadily growing crowd, at the right gate, boarding time slowly approaching.
But when you got the airport Blues, it only gets bluer. A boarding agent was suddenly announcing that due to the fact that some of the flight crew, i.e. enough flight attendants, hadn't showed up yet, FAA regulations prohibited loading the passengers yet, and so boarding, and the flight itself, were both delayed a half hour. As small compensation at this point, they also called me to the counter to give me a boarding pass. I had made the flight, but would this be a Pyrrhic victory? You could sense anxiety in the passengers ramping up, and some of them were already stoked on Starbucks coffee. These early morning flights always had a lot of important connecting flights.
The minutes slowly ticked by. When the first missing flight attendant finally reached the security barricade about five minutes away from us and notified our agents, this was announced with enthusiastic excitement, as if Elvis had now entered the building. A few minutes later she strolled in, nonchalantly, towing her luggage, as if she had never missed a beat, then proceeded through the security door leading to the plane, generating a bit of hoopla. Stuck in the snow in the frigid streets of NYC, or had she been out partying too late?
An appropriate message for all at Kennedy
Finally, we began boarding, already over 30 minutes behind schedule. As the large queue slowly dwindled, another flight attendant, perhaps a hastily called standby, hair somewhat disheveled, came racing past me, luggage wheels just about smokin', to also duck into the plane. I kept looking at my watch. Now we were cutting it close again.
Finally everyone was seated, the door closed, the rote libations to safety were announced and the plane, after a short wait on the tarmac, took off like the proverbial bat out of that frozen ring in Hell, headed due south. We were now 45 minutes behind schedule but the pilot was determined to make that up. Making my Haiti flight wasn't a done deal, but it was looking better.
We touched down at Miami International around 9:20 to sunny skies and temperatures in the 70s. By time we were docked and offloaded, it was another fifteen minutes, but thankfully Flight 1291 to Haiti was only four gates away and the distance quickly traversed. They were already boarding the passengers, and Georgianne was nowhere around, so she must already be on the flight.
Once inside I spied her shortish blonde hair peaking over a seat in the middle rows and slid up behind her. She was talking to a Haitian gentleman who turned out to be an in-law of Popa Doc Duvalier himself. How is that for synchronistic timing and location for a political journalist?
Georgianne was more than happy to see me, having worried that I still might not make it. Then it turns out that the Duvalier-related fellow was in the wrong seat, thus he decided to vacate it, giving me plentiful room to sit next to Georgianne on what was not a full flight, so I was able to keep the seat as we started sharing notes and a few laughs over my misadventures in the frozen Big Apple North.
At 10:05 AM or so I was at long last disappearing beyond the horizon of Miami into the blue skies over the blue waters of the Caribbean Sea, heading for colorful, never a dull moment Haiti.
Touchdown in Haiti
Less than two hours later the island of Hispaniola, containing the nations of Haiti in the Western third of the island and the Dominican Republic to the East, was once again looming into my view, Haiti's craggy mountain ranges dominating the horizon, the rivers and riverbeds that wound through them, as well as the larger roadways, clearly delineated.
It was around Noon when we touched down at Aeroport Nationale Toussaint Louverture in Port-au-Prince, our plane quickly taxiing to its departure terminal. We were soon in the middle of the rush through the corridors, down the escalator, past the official Haitian welcoming band filling the air with Compas sounds and beats, and out onto the sunny tarmac to board the shuttle bus to Customs. It was hot, in the 80s, even a bit oppressive, quite a contrast to the snow-covered urban tundras of New York City. Nous étions arrivés. Maintenant, l'aventure commence!
On the shuttle to Haitian Customs
Inside the shuttle
a Brazilian Airlines jet
Japan Airlines
Inside Customs
A giant Voila Cellphone ad on a wall.
We have already passed the gauntlet of Haitian luggage handlers and cab drivers desperate for dollars and gourdes. Georgianne, in the shade on the left, is racing ahead while trying to call Andre, our driver and "fixer".
Luggage handlers racing by
Now we are waiting next to the parking lot, like this woman, for our ride.
This hasn't changed since my last trip to Haiti. UN troops assigned to MINUSTAH patrol everywhere. Welcomed by some Haitians as a security force, they are considered an occupation force by many others that has shot and killed Haitians while reinforcing the coup d'etat of 2004 against Jean Bertrand Aristide.
Another patrol truck stops in front of us.
This soldier is perhaps wondering why the Hell I am taking his photo.
Out of the blue, Andre arrives, to change the focus of my camera.
And we are out of here, headed for the crazy streets of Port-au-Prince.
Past the familiar Haitian roadside market
As always, motor scooters are abuzz everywhere!
And our return to Haiti would be incomplete without a view of the omnipresent Tap-Tap! BIENVENUE!
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Stay tuned for Part 2, where we visit a new women's clinic and more.
Authors Bio:I am a student of history, religion, exoteric and esoteric, the Humanities in general and a tempered advocate for the ultimate manifestation of peace, justice and the unity of humankind through self-realization and mutual respect, although I am not a pacifist, nor do I believe in peace at any price, which is no peace at all but only delays inevitable conflict. There are times when the world must act. Planetary consciousness is evolving, but there are many retrograde forces that would drag us back down.
I have also written one book, a combination of poetry, photography and essays entitled "Post Katrina Blues", my reflections on the Gulf Coast and New Orleans two years after Katrina struck. Go to the store at http://sanfranciscobaypress.com/ to purchase. And I also have a blog called Plutonian Mac.