June 20, 2008 Travel disobedience
AOL Travel’s Peter Greenberg says don’t take too literal an approach to airport information - or rules:
I’m one of those people who consciously disobeys airport signs and airline instructions — in most cases, because they’re either misleading, or wrong. And you should as well.
Consider the airport departure boards: they constantly lie. The words “On Time” are — as I think we would all agree — relative. Is the plane “scheduled” to leave on time? Of course it is. But that doesn’t mean it will.
Here’s what I do. When I get to the airport, I only look at the departure board to determine what gate my flight is scheduled to leave from. And then I immediately ignore all other information on the departure side. Instead, I go immediately to the arrivals board and check to see what is arriving at my supposed departure gate. If nothing is arriving there until next Tuesday, I now know I won’t be leaving from that gate. The key here is to get solid information and to retain as many options as you can in the flying experience. - AOL
Reader Comments (1)
While looking at arrivals is often an interesting datapoint, please note that sometimes you're flying the first flight of the day for a particular aircraft, so there won't be an arrival, since it happened the night before. Or (although rarely) they are moving the equipment in from some other part of the airport.