On-Time Departure by Robert J. Binney

Even before the alarm went off, I knew I’d be racing like hell to make my flight. My schedule was tight but not so tight that there was a serious risk of Highway Patrol strobes sweeping across my rearview. It turns out that my race to Departures did feature the sirens and flashing blue lights of a police cruiser. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

4:35 AM (85 minutes before Takeoff)

I’d been commuting to Salt Lake City from Philadelphia for a few months. For reasons long forgotten, I booked this week’s flight home at 6AM, going through Denver. I’d flown close to two million miles the past few years on “my” airline (and had the luggage tag to commemorate it), but my Denver flight that day was on an “alliance partner.”

Once you accrue enough passenger experience, the airlines have to come up with special and unique ways to screw you. Delays? Lost bags? That’s for rookies. They need to dig deep to find a particular cruelty to knock me off my game, and this week, they found it. Late the night before, I learned I couldn’t check in online, as I was “switching metal” (i.e., flying two different carriers, even though they’re “partners”) en route. I had to physically check in at the ticket counter. Yes, at the airport.

4:49 AM

A quick shower, and then I was in the hotel lobby meeting my colleague, Pierre. We were on the same Denver flight, but he was continuing on to LaGuardia. He was on that airline all the way, so he had his boarding passes. At that time of day, it was about a fifteen-minute drive to the airport; I still had to fill the rental car with gas, but why get there early? What do people do at airports? Stand in Starbucks lines? Shop overpriced Bluetooth accessories?

We took the elevator to the parking garage and walked to the car. It was early, we were groggy, and we went to the wrong spot. No Optialtimapala-ish rental sedan, but some sliding-door monstrosity that wanted me to ask about its grandchildren.

I looked at Pierre. “Isn’t this where we parked last night?”

“I thought this was right. Maybe we were in the corner?”

We’d been on this project so long that everything blended together—meetings, dinners, hotel rooms, parking lots. In a soulless concrete bunker, all spots look the same.

We rolled our suitcases across the ramp to the corner, where a Ford dually took up two spots. Oh, right. That asshole had been there all week.

“What kind of car do we have again?”

“It’s blue, right?”

I hit the Lock button on the remote, listening for the “chirp.” Silence.

“Were we in that weird spot, the one on the angle?”

“That was last week when we had the white one.”

We rolled our suitcases over to the weird spot. An old Grand Am with peeling window tint was crammed between the yellow bollards.

We had walked to dinner the night before. “You didn’t take the car anywhere after work?”

“No, did you?”

“No?”

“Did we park on P2?”

“We never park on P2.”

We rolled down to P2. We hadn’t parked on P2.

“We get towed, you think?”

“Did we put the thing on the dashboard?”

“We never put the thing on the dashboard.”

4:56 AM

We rolled our suitcases back off the elevator. I yelled to a startled clerk across the lobby, “You tow last night?”

He told me he’d be with me after he checked out his current guest.

My Man of Action instincts kicked in. I grabbed my phone and called 911, raising my voice to a level I hoped would awaken some latent “urgency” gene in the desk clerk. I told Pierre he might as well grab a cab; he offered to stick around, but I couldn’t see the point in both of us missing the flight, and it was my name on the rental.

That other departing guest couldn’t help but overhear, so he offered to share his cab. I asked Pierre to call when he got to the gate.

5:03 AM (57 minutes before Takeoff)

The hotel shared a city block—and a garage—with a sushi bar, a piano store, and, luckily, the downtown police precinct. An officer responded pretty quickly. That, or he was early for the hotel’s breakfast buffet.

“What kind of a moron steals a car from underneath the police station?” he chuckled.

“Well, he did get away with it.” That went over well.     

He started the report, and I called the airline; they could re-route me to Phoenix and waitlist me on the 6PM to Philly or send me to San Francisco and home the next morning.

“You sure the vehicle is missing?” He gave me that cop stare.

It was hard to prove a negative, so I walked through the garage, confirming the car wasn’t there.

5:27 AM

Pierre called, running across the terminal. We were still doing paperwork on my end.

He’d told the Gate Agent about my situation, and she was uncharacteristically sympathetic. I asked him to explain that I wasn’t checked in and beg her to hold my seat—even though boarding started in three minutes. She told him to tell me she couldn’t hold the flight for me. I told him to tell her I understood, but I planned on finding a way to the flight. He told her what I told him, and she told him to tell me she would try to help. I told him to say to her “Thank you.”

5:31 AM (Twenty-nine minutes before Takeoff)

The cop stopped me from texting the hotel manager about getting access to security tapes from the garage; he said that was his job. I apologized, blamed those Man of Action instincts, and said I still hoped to make my flight, which—Pierre just texted—had already begun The Boarding Process.

5:36 AM

I signed the paperwork and took my 829^th panicked look at the clock.

“What time is your flight?” the officer asked.

“Doors close in about 15 minutes.”

“Sorry you missed it.”

I’d done the math in my head 828 times but finally articulated it aloud. “Four minutes to get through Security, four minutes to run to the gate… If I had gotten in a cab nine minutes ago, I might have pulled it off.”

“You can really get from the curb to the plane in eight minutes?”

I nodded.

“This I gotta see. Let’s go, O.J.”

5:37 AM

“Buckle up.”

I slid into the passenger seat, pinned under the massive MDT computer.

He flicked a switch and the blue overhead lights swirled across the hotel façade. A quick tap of his siren to clear his path—easier than checking his mirrors, I suppose—and he hit it.

The few blocks to the freeway jerked like a poorly maintained church carnival ride, but once we hit the ramp, he punched the gas, and the Charger Enforcer’s Hemi threw me back in my seat. After it torqued through its seven gears, cool morning airflow pushed us down, cradling us, making the cruiser more stable the faster we went.

Over the thwoop-thwoop-thwoop of every semi we passed, the officer told me he never got the chance to drive like this. “It’s an empty road, I’m not chasing some asshole and worrying about what he’s going to do; I’m not racing out on some call, no idea what I’ll find there… This is nice.” Somehow, I was doing him a favor here.

He asked what the car rental folks said when I broke the news to them. I told him they only had an 800- number, and I had been planning on going to the counter, when I thought I’d have the day to kill at the airport. Of course, I still had the key.

“You could probably just drop that in their parking lot, and they’d go crazy thinking they lost the car!”

I was ashamed I hadn’t thought of that. “I already made the mistake of calling you guys.”

“I’m sure you did the right thing.” I wasn’t sure he was sure.

We laughed again, but only briefly—we were already pulling up to the sliding doors. I thanked him profusely, running out of the car and…

5:43 AM

…calling Pierre while running past the Economy Class desk’s velvet ropes, telling him I was onsite. They were boarding Group Six.

The Premier Services ticket agent was as helpful as I’d feared.

I took a deep breath, trying not to look like a crazy, sweaty man, and began. “I know this isn’t your fault, but I could use your help.” This is my standard opening line to anyone whose keyboard stands between me and what I need. “My rental car was stolen this morning, so I’m late. I need to get checked in for the Denver flight. The GA is holding the door.”

He tapped on his keyboard and slowly, dramatically, looked at the wall clock behind him. “Check-in closed thirteen minutes ago.”

“I know, that’s why I need your help. See, my car was stolen…”

He put his foot on a shelf behind the counter in a well-practiced service desk power move and stroked his neatly trimmed mustache. “You should have been here by 5:30.”

“Right. See, my car—”

“We recommend planning on arriving at least ninety minutes…” He treated me like a rookie when he could see my status on his screen.

“Having my car stolen wasn’t my plan. I had to file a police report—”

“I’m sure.”

“Did you see the car that dropped me off!!?!” The people who had were still pointing at me, wondering whether I was an escaped criminal, the mayor, or Batman.

“The doors close in…” he looked at the clock again. “Six minutes. You should have checked in online.”

“See, I’m switching metal in Denver, and…”

He attacked his keyboard like he was Elton John and shook his head. “The flight’s under gate control. Nothing I can do.”

“So give me a gate pass. Please.” I’d learned long ago that the trick to airline travel is just to move one step forward at a time. Once someone throws up resistance and tells you what you need is impossible, it becomes impossible; so instead of being one of those lunatics losing their shit trying to get everything, just work on getting the next thing. Adopt an old-school ball control, three-yards-and-a-cloud-of-dust mentality. One step forward doesn’t get me to Philly, but it keeps me moving. It gets me past him.

Another look at the clock. “You’ll never make it past Security in time.”

Just make it to the next step. “And if I don’t get through, that’s on me. At least let me try.”

He couldn’t find a reason to deny that, so he printed the gate pass and reluctantly handed it to me.

5:49 AM (Eleven minutes before Takeoff)

I ran, flat-out, to Pre-Check in front of the four people in line. I blurted the shortest version of my story, including that my flight’s doors were closing that minute, and would anybody mind if I jumped ahead. There’s always one asshat who does.

So we all let him go first. I saw Pierre calling my phone as it went into the X-ray tunnel.

5:52 AM

Up the escalator and across the B Concourse. I may coin this as Binney’s Paradox, but the later you are for a flight, the farther away the gate.

I got to the door, two minutes past the flight’s official “close,” yelling “I’mBinneyI’mBinneyI’mBinney!”

The Gate Agent smiled. “You made it! I was just about to shut the door!”

Disheveled, suitcase bouncing on its shitty wheels, panting, all I could get out was “Thankyouthankyouthankyoutha—.” I’d made it.

She held out her hand. “Boarding pass?”

Maybe I hadn’t made it.

“Um…” Apparently, she didn’t understand from Pierre that I wasn’t actually checked in.

“Oh no! I gave your seat away!”

What did we learn playing the game of “telephone” in kindergarten?

Like one of those thumb-push puppets, I collapsed as the last hour’s tension drained out of me. “Is there… anythingyou can do?” I lost control of my words. “Switching metal… The website… The police… the blue lights…” I lazily spun my finger, whoop whoop, and shrugged.

She furrowed her brow. Actually thought. “Follow me.”

We walked onto the jet bridge, and she closed the door behind us. “I don’t think there’s anyone in the jump seat,” she said, scrolling through her dot-matrix printout. The jump is the tiny fold-down seat, no bigger than a footrest, between the pilot and the cockpit door. I couldn’t imagine the FAA allowing that, but I wasn’t going to interrupt her. “If the captain’s okay with it…”

He was not.

I stood in the galley, panting, wild-eyed. There’s a That Guy on every flight, and today it was me. Pierre, astonished, toasted me with his complimentary Dasani; the person in “my” seat sipped his Screwdriver without even a “thank you.”

She pled my case in the cockpit. The captain said there was another pilot, a friend of his, deadheading in 24B. If hewas willing to take the jump seat, he’d allow that.

The GA held up her finger – Stay! – and disappeared up the aisle, snaking past 23 rows of infrequent flyers, trying to jam too-large Samsonites into the overhead compartments. Maybe 24B would be willing…?

5:58 AM

Once buckled into 24B for an on-time departure, I called our accounting manager Paula’s voicemail. “You’re not going to believe this…”

7:32 AM

Taxiing to the gate in Denver, my voicemail chirped. It was Paula. In fifty years, and tens of thousands of rentals, this was the firm’s first “stolen car” claim.

7:48 AM

I walked to the next gate for my boarding pass. The Agent was stymied—I never checked in for my Salt Lake flight; how could I possibly be here?

I knew I’d be dining out on this story for years, so it was time to start rehearsing it. “Well, my rental car was stolen…”

I’d made it. I was going to be home on time. I even had time to grab a cup of coffee in Denver. I never did get my frequent flyer miles for that first leg, though.

Aftermath (Or, What Happened to the Car?)

I lived in fear that entire weekend. I pictured myself returning to the hotel garage, and that damn blue rental would be in the dead-center parking space, right where I left it. I almost convinced myself that it would be hiding in plain sight, that I just had been too hasty and neglectful, and that I was looking for the wrong car.

Before my return flight to Salt Lake, I concocted a plan to disguise myself (even packing a hoodie in my carry-on); if that car was there, I’d just steal the goddamned thing myself and ditch it somewhere. I still had the keys, and it wasn’t like I’d have to worry about fingerprints.

Luckily, it wasn’t there. It really had been stolen.

Sometime the following week

A robocall came in from the rental agency: “You have not returned your vehicle. If you’d like to extend your rental…”

About three weeks later

The airport rental counter’s general manager called me. “You’ll never believe what I just saw on the lot.”

That morning, a police impound tow truck dropped off the missing vehicle; the guy at the gate apparently didn’t think this was odd. He got the spare keys, washed the car, and put it back in circulation. The GM only discovered this because the system popped out a report of “Overdue Cars Finally Returned” or something similar.

The police had found the car, abandoned near Bountiful Peak.

The GM had never submitted the insurance paperwork, so he just called it good. No harm, no foul.

But the joke was on them. I never did refill the gas tank.