D/FW airport is a sprawling place. It has five large terminals, lettered A through E. Our original check-in was to be at Terminal E, but with the flight change we will now check in at Terminal A, as our Super Shuttle driver confirms by phone. (He also tries, unsuccessfully, to get us on an earlier flight. A nice effort, that.) We’re deposited, with our luggage, at Terminal A, at 8:15. I share our situation with a nearby TSA agent and confirm that we’d best check in at the American ticket counter rather than with a skycap. So, we haul the bags into an elevator (taking two trips) and head upstairs.
We weren’t sure what the airport crowds would be like this Saturday after Christmas. While there are plenty of people about, there is no line at the ticket counter. Check-in is smooth – it’s nice to know they were expecting us – but we learn our departure gate is at another terminal. No problem, D/FW has a nice new automated “SkyLink” shuttle – behind security – that we can ride to our new gate in Terminal D. (And we certainly have plenty of time to get there!)
Once we’re done checking in (and having gone through a litany of questions with another TSA agent that I’d not experienced before, such as whether I was carrying firearms in my luggage), we head for security. There is a substantial line, but we’re to the metal detectors in less than 20 minutes. Shoes off, jackets off, metal in the bins, pass through the detector, and collect the gear.
Bob is, as usual, pulled aside for wanding. He doesn’t look much like a terrorist to me, but maybe I don’t think like they do. More likely, his hip replacements just set off the alarm each time.
The agent wanding Bob is a congenial older man. “Have you been through this before?” he asks.
“Many times,” Bob replies.
The agent smiles and displays his handheld detector unit. “Then you know that this is the part where I beat you with this.”
Bob chuckles nervously. “No, that part is new.”
With everyone through the screening process safely, we re-shoe ourselves and head to the SkyLink shuttle. It’s nice, clean, modern, and has us longing for Disney monorails!
I strike up a conversation with a young-ish TSA agent riding with us. We discuss our trip to Disney. He expresses a desire to go back to Walt Disney World, as he hasn’t been since he was a kid, but more than that he wants to go back to Europe and see real castles again, something he did as a teenager. He mentions Nieuschwanstein specifically, the castle that was, in part, an inspiration for the castles of Disneyland and the
The TSA guy tells me that if we have to spend time at the airport, Terminal D’s a nice place to do it. For one thing, it’s fairly new, and much better designed than the older terminal buildings. He describes it as a combination terminal building, art museum, and shopping mall.
He also offers to lead us to our gate, since he is getting off at the same stop. I thank him but decline – we’ve got too much time to kill, so we’re actually going to stay on the SkyLink for a circuit of the entire airport before getting off!
We ride around, our own elevated tour of the airport. It’s rather a nice way to see it. I was the type of guy who used to hang out at airports, plane- and people-watching, until tougher security following 9/11 meant you had to be a ticketed passenger to get through to the gates. So I resolve to enjoy our wait time as much as I can.
We’re at gate D29 at 9:45. If our original flight were still in the plans, we’d be boarding about now. As it is, we will be boarding in about four hours.
So here we sit, in the very nice, new, D/FW Terminal D, reading, napping, chatting, exploring. I can be thankful that (1) we are not on The Amazing Race, and (2) that we have the extra day built in. Hey, this is exactly why we schedule our flights to arrive the day before our “official” package begins. We’ve just never needed to use it before.
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