Of the many bizarre aspects of air travel (there are many), the timeless quality of the airport has to be among the strangest. Strange because time is, at a very obvious level, ubiquitous at the airport: Arrivals and departures are posted everywhere. The entire system is structured around clock time.
And yet, airport time feels quite different from ordinary time. The normal rhythms and natural patterns that structure life are gone. The terminal is governed by the cold logic of the clock alone. Apart from being able to see out the window and, in doing so, determine the time of day, the airport always feels the same inside. Even inclement weather is only rarely a barrier to shuttling busy travelers to their destinations. Admittedly, I’ve enjoyed the relaxed taboos around enjoying an early morning cocktail while waiting for a flight. Indeed, this whole reflection was inspired as I ingested a Shake Shack burger and fries this morning at 9am while awaiting a connecting flight. But such experiences do illustrate that normal time stops when you pass through security.
In The Life We’re Looking For, Andy Crouch suggested that air travel chips away at our humanity. His argument, as I recall it, was that the “superpowers” offered by technology can only be enjoyed by sacrificing some piece of our personhood. He was not launching some full-scale assault on technology; rather, his more limited point was that new technologies always offer trade-offs. My musings would complement Crouch’s point: the timeless environment of the airport is a de-humanizing one for us time-bound creatures. And lest I be misunderstood: This isn’t a screed against flying. (I’m typing this at gate B55 at Denver International Airport.) I see this, instead, as an attempt to look soberly at the trade-offs involved in air travel. The gains are easy to see, as they always are. The drawbacks less so.