Baggage Claim

     My consistent air travel experiences recently are with Atlanta and Richmond. Each has its own baggage claim persona.

     Richmond. Richmond has a feral band of Luggage Apes-LA (see photo).

Luggage Apes Scan The Horizon Looking For The Alpha Male.

     They take pride in making sure that they trickle small amounts of bags onto the carousel. . . after they’ve made you run around a bit. Since Richmond is a small airport, they usually wait until two flights have arrived before they start your adventures in getting your bags. First the LA’s will randomly start carousels in motions and I believe watch from a CCTV monitor as all the passengers move to the noise and movement. Then they stop abruptly once they are sure that both plane loads are waiting at the same carousel. Next, they randomly assign arriving flight information to carousels by lighting up the announcement board that: “Flight 2892 from Bongoslavia has it’s bags arriving on carousel 3.” Once everyone is thoroughly confused and they have pulled themselves away from the CCTV monitor the trickle begins, one lightly loaded baggage cart at a time. Usually a 30 – 45 minute experience.
     Atlanta is different. After riding the train for 20 minutes to get to Baggage Claim, you arrive, check the TV monitor and go to your carousel to see:

     Yep, nuthin. As you stand there, you have to keep your eyes open on all the other carousels. Why? Cuz that’s where your bag will come in at. Think you’re done? Not yet. When you get al your crap put together, and have either thrown away your baggage claim stub, or buried it in the bottom of your carry-on who should appear but the bag Nazi’s. You ain’t leavin’ until produce your papers. I’ve tried leaving after looking for them, but they pop up out of the floor. “Show me your papers please.”