Trisha Sahu was annoyed.
It has been 3 hours since she landed at Frankfurt Airport. with 2 more hours to go before they start boarding for her connecting flight to San Francisco. It's been 10 hours since she had her last meal as there were very few decent vegetarian options at Food Court. She wanted to catch some sleep but thanks to the two large coffee she had while waiting. She was awake, alert, and edgy.
It wasn’t just caffeine. She was anxious that if she fell asleep she might miss the flight. Usually, She finds her way around this problem by finding a chair near her boarding gate and requesting an airline staff or fellow passengers to wake her up at the start of boarding.
But today it wasn’t possible. The activity level was higher than usual at Airport. There was a disruption in air traffic due to volcanic eruption in Asia and a lot of flights were being re-routed. Too many unscheduled flights were making a stopover. Gate Number is written on her boarding pass was no longer valid. An overworked Lufthansa staff member at the helpdesk told her that while her flight was still on time (so far) but Gate number is not finalised yet.
This was a tricky situation as Frankfurt Airport was notoriously big and confusing. In the worst-case scenario, she might need up to 15-20 min to reach the gate allocated to her. Fact that she didn’t know German was not helping either. Anyway, She realised she has few options.
None of it was sufficient to calm her anxiety. She couldn’t sleep. But She installed the app and punched in her PNR info. Her onscreen boarding pass was there. She tucked her paper pass in the pocket of her jacket and now this app was her boarding. She couldn’t sleep and kept coming back to it every few minutes. Eventually, there was a notification and she refreshed the boarding pass on the app. There was the gate number. 21A She walked her way to the gate, it took her 5 minutes. There was a big line of tired hungry and grumpy passengers waiting to board. She stood there, two dozen men, women, and kids ahead of her. A tall german guy at the security check was doing his best to start boarding as soon as possible. There were announcements on PA.
All Business Class Passengers come from Line A All Women and Kids from Row 1 to 30 line B All Women and Kids from Row 30 to 50 line c Passengers with wheelchairs and infants please wait. We will board you at last. She stood there sipping coffee from her Starbucks cup, her handbag resting on her arm, laptop backpack stuck in the handgrip of her Tumi stroller bag.
After 15 minutes of waiting, it was her turn at security. The tall guy asked her to show the boarding pass she pulled out a crumpled paper from her pocket showed it to him. It was in bad shape and it has no gate number, Flight number was changed because two flights were merged.
He looked at the pass and compared flight details with the one on the clipboard in his hand to check if the original flight number was in the list. It was. By the time he verified that she pulled her iPhone and flashed it to him. HE smiled and said in his German accent “ Guten Tag! You should have shown it at the start, you would have been seated in your seat by now .” She smiled, sighed, and moved down the aerodrome shaft.
The Air hostess at the entrance of the plane asked for her boarding pass she showed the app and they smiled and said "Thank you". She looked at the boarding pass for seat number it said 21 I. She dragged her feet to the 21st-row, window seat on the left line. She placed her luggage in the overhead storage, removed her jacket & shoes. and took her seat. She put her phone on charge and was looking for AirPods case in her jacket pocket when the air hostess came and asked if she would like a glass of wine.
“Yes Please You are a lifesaver, “she said with a sigh of relief, still looking for the AirPod case . she stumbled upon a crumpled boarding pass. “Can you throw this to the garbage bin please? “ she said to the air hostess. No ma’am please don’t do that... You will need it to collect your baggage in case it got rerouted and lost.
“Man !! This is 2021 and we still have to deal with this archaic paper trail ..there got to be a better way . “ she said, thinking aloud to herself . But that was a question for some other day. She sipped her wine, put on her eye mask. Started her favourite playlist of ambient sleep music. Sent a selfie to friends and family with the caption “ Boarded. Tired and singing out. See you on the other side in 5 Hrs, can’t wait “ and put her phone on airplane mode. Within no time she was asleep.
But the question remained: there got to be a better way? What would it be?