State of my NAIA1 fears stays

Readers, what brighter plan would you have devised, if your were in my shoes, to solve my NAIA1 nightmare-problem below? I was to arrive there (ugh!) from First World well-managed S.F. International, on Dec. 8, 2011 at 10:25 p.m. “No more being stressfully stranded there for hours laden with luggage,” I vowed myself. So, this time via Internet I carefully planned to be fetched from there as a non-VIP arrival by no less than a well-instructed team of three greeters: my wife, secretary, and our car driver.

Media had reported on toilet, visa, baggage carousel improvements, which I hereby confirm from my most recent arrival from S.F. Yet I doubted that its most dreaded nightmare-problem for most non-VIP arrivals would be identified or recognized and urgently addressed! Taking matters into my own hands I prepared my greeters for the final solution to my NAIA1 anxiety-fears.

I feared being forced to wait for hours amidst chaotic crowds of arrivals, greeters, porters, airport security, other staff, potential snatchers into which we were all herded. I feared being overcrowded further into the narrow sidewalk by equally disgorged baggage from the two downward-sloping exit tunnels by all sorts, carts in that mentioned ground-level sidewalk. In past arrivals I’d waited for hours glued to my heavy boxes of baggage and big hand-carry. For, don’t signs in public places ever remind, “Don’t Leave Your Valuables Unattended.” That’s mostly all I would do upon arriving from S.F. There I would wait until the crowds and traffic thinned out, and I could be seen or readily see my greeters in the poorly and even perversely lighted greeters’ fenced-off areas (from their backs darkening their faces) from across the very heavily trafficked ground-level street. I remember from a mid-1970s arrival long ago how I got stressfully stranded there, and fuming, for nearly four hours. So, for my final solution, I stressed to my greeters that I’d stay put at only one area at the right tunnel exit. “Don’t look for me anymore at the left tunnel exit area some distance from the other exit. Don’t go round and round in the car hoping to find me in that heavy traffic swarm.”

“No,” I e-mailed my three greeters from S.F. “I won’t look for any of you in those poorly lighted swarm conditions. You look for me instead at that one fixed area of the right tunnel exit. You can walk through from the parking lot and greeters areas to me eventually by telling strict door guards that you are fetching a just-arrived senior citizen.”

Readers, I was again stressfully stranded for nearly two hours, even as I just waited strategically at one pre-arranged area glued to my boxes and items of allowed baggage and hand-carry. “What took you guys so long?” I fumed. They chorused about getting entangled in very heavy traffic near the approach to the airport. More of the same kind of heavy traffic awaited them on entry into the poorly lighted over-crowded parking and pot-holed from the rains. More waiting they suffered for a slot to free up. The security guards were stricter too than usual in keeping greeters away from crossing over the heavily trafficked ground-level street to find their awaited ones.

I’ve just recently published online this year at cnx.org a book on our supposedly retracting top Phl hero; I felt bright enough in solving for good my NAIA1 arrival fears. How would you have prepared this arrival where you in my shoes? —Roberto M. Bernardo, [email protected].