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With a few notable exceptions (Dallas-Fort Worth, Houston, Tampa and Seattle), U.S. airports are woefully unprepared to cope with—much less comfort or coddle—the masses of travelers. Prime example: Atlanta, the nation's second busiest airport. Completed in 1961, it was intended to handle 40,000 passengers a day, but is now besieged by more than twice that number. It lacks enough lounges, restaurants and toilets. A $400 million new airport is being built, but at present growth rates, it will be obsolete within three years after it opens in 1981. Warns Richard Jody, the Director of Aviation in Miami's Dade County: "All the crises have been accelerated. If you think traffic and parking are bad now, you haven't seen anything yet."
"Our immediate challenge," says Eastern Senior Vice President Russell Ray Jr., "is to keep people from feeling like cows." Because of the problem of processing passengers through check-in and security inspection, flights often leave and arrive late.
If jam-packed planes are uncomfortable for passengers, they are nightmares for the hostesses, who can barely make their way through the narrow aisles and foothills of hand luggage. Says an Eastern stewardess: "The glamour is gone. We used to be able to sit and talk with passengers. Now we're working twice as hard, twice as fast." Airline food, never a gourmet's delight, is becoming even less palatable as the airlines try to save money on meals to offset the lower fares. The old gray steak has given way to stews of questionable origin. Drink is not a reliable escape; the cocktail ordered just after take-off often arrives just before the passenger gets to dessert.
Arrival is turning into an ordeal. Delays at baggage claim areas can run two hours, and ground transportation is inadequate. Worst of all are the U.S.'s two biggest gateway airports, Los Angeles and J.F.K., both bad greeting cards for foreign visitors. Los Angeles' customs area is so small that inspectors can process only two jumbo-jet loads at a time. Passengers on the other jumbos must wait on board for as long as three hours.
Since as many as eight jumbos touch down at the same hour, pilots compete with each other to land first and get their passengers at the head of the customs line. Some air schedules are being rejiggered to allow an extra half hour for passengers to make connecting flights.
As a consequence of the chaos, many travelers have horror stories to recount. A young mother traveling with two children to New York City from Bogota was ushered to a lounge to wait for a delayed departure. Three and a half hours later, she saw the distinctively painted Braniff plane taking off and when she checked, found it was hers. The harried agent had forgotten to call her. Bound for Tokyo, Bernie Power, an Executive with Bally Manufacturing Corp., was rerouted and then bumped off a flight in Seoul, where he was informed that the next available booking was two months away. Power got to Tokyo by standing by at the gate almost the entire next day until he found a spare seat. "This doesn't look like Dallas!" exclaimed a middle-aged woman. "No, Ma'am, it isn't," replied a ground clerk. It was Atlanta. In the confusion at London's Heathrow airport, she had boarded Delta instead of Braniff.