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Report 1601: Italy 2008: Abruzzo, Umbria, Then Worries

By Andrew from Missouri, Summer 2008

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Page 1 of 6: The Flight Over - 7 Hour Layover in Atlanta - Tour of CNN Studio

I had a biennial trip to Italy in late summer 2008. The way this trip went, I will write about my flight there at the beginning rather than delaying it to the end as I’ve generally done; go to the next page to see about Italy.

My planning blog shows how I, surprisingly, still had a transatlantic award to use on Northwest Airlines, without having done much flying with them. I booked this trip, with the outbound trip on Delta, their future merger partner. The day before, I tried to check in online and got error messages. I got to Kansas City airport and tried to check myself in at the kiosk; it still wasn’t working. The agent worked to check me in and said the problem might have been because the flight number had changed since I originally booked. In fact, in the eight months since my booking, I had monitored my itinerary and saw that the first segment had changed a few times between Delta mainline jets and Atlantic Southeast Airlines regional jets. It finally was on a CRJ-700 operated by ASA, which gets some bad reviews.

This flight was fine: I got an aisle seat with an empty window. Scheduled departure was at 9:30, the door closed at 9:28, takeoff was at 9:45. Although there was a warning of an air traffic control delay, and there had been major disruptions the day before, the flight went smoothly. Scheduled arrival in Atlanta was 12:30, it landed at 12:25 and was at the gate at 12:29.

I had a seven-hour layover in Atlanta, and what I first had in mind was to determine a current objective fact about this major airport that I wasn’t able to find from the Internet and questions on message boards. There was contradictory information about whether there were lockers, with fingerprint recognition, air-side at the airport. I arrived at concourse C and didn’t find any lockers in the logical place, near the escalators to the underground train between concourses. I had time to check at least the central sections of all the concourses, and I would start at international concourse E, a likely spot. I didn’t find them there, but there was an airport information counter where I asked. The agent there said there used to be lockers but there were no more. Since I took her main job to be a language interpreter, and maybe she was saying the change happened with 9/11, and I’d heard differently, I decided I would at least look at concourse A. There I saw lockers; I went to them and found a sign saying the lockers were out of service as long as the threat level was at Orange: question resolved as best could be determined.

I knew that I could store my carry-on in any case at Wrap-a-Bag land-side. I took the final underground walk to the main terminal: in exiting to the meeting area, I turned left to Hudson News at the corner, left again to Wrap-a-Bag, where I stored the bag for $6. I then phoned to see about availability for the CNN studio tour; they said it didn’t look like there would be a problem. I proceeded to the MARTA station for the train ride into the city. To pay the fare, I needed to go to the machine, paying $1.75 for each direction and 50 cents for the Breeze ticket on which the fare was loaded. I paid with a $5 bill and got a dollar coin in change, a rare occasion to handle one. I boarded the train, and connected at the Five Points hub to go one more stop to the CNN station.

I went to the big lobby of the CNN Center with its food court, and found the ticket booth for the tour. Indeed, there was no wait, and a small group formed for the tour within a few minutes. We started with what was reportedly the longest escalator ride in the world.; then there was a small room where they demonstrated teleprompters and the green screen for the weather map. A more interesting stop was in another room, where we saw the live feed and heard the director’s instructions to change cameras, run tape, and cue correspondents, and what the anchor, Don Lemon, did while off camera. Later we saw the newsroom from above, with the many producers’ desks and the anchor desk in the middle; we also had a look at the Headline News desk from above.

Afterward, I wandered the Centennial Olympic Park, turned back south, and looked at Underground Atlanta. This is a shopping and entertainment area underground along old buildings from when the street ran lower. It was an OK visit; the area had an urban feeling, with many people around. It was around 4pm, and I was ready to board the MARTA train at the connected Five Points station. I got to the airport, retrieved my bag, and prepared for security at this airport where everyone enters at the same place. There were many checkpoints available and it didn’t take too long; the agent showed enthusiasm when he saw my boarding pass to Rome, asked if I’d been there before and had seen all the basilicas; I kept my answers to a minimum, having in my mind various online posts not looking kindly on TSA agents and their extraneous chatting, and I didn’t bother saying that Rome wasn’t my real trip destination.

I took the train to Concourse E and got to my gate, still early. As the area filled up, I noted that there were many Italians, many of whom were connecting from Mexico; given the exchange rate and the time of year (end of summer), that was a common direction of transatlantic travel. My boarding pass showed me in boarding zone 8, and they boarded four groups at a time. When I selected my seat many months in advance, with no status with the airline, I got an exit row seat; at boarding, the gate agent asked if I was ready for that; I’m not sure if my problem checking in online related to that. So I was glad to have that bit of extra leg room.

They’d started pre-boarding before 7, I was at my seat at 7:20, the scheduled departure was at 7:30, when the door closed and takeoff was at 7:55. I had a chicken piccata dinner of normal airline quality; I had a Manhattan cocktail from a mix listed as a specialty for that month, and wine with dinner; Delta gives one drink free but didn’t charge me for either. I noted the flight route going up the East Coast; in the morning it was interesting to see the tip of Corsica from the air. Although the takeoff seemed to be a normal time after leaving the gate at a busy airport, there was a delay on arrival: scheduled time 11:20, landing at 11:45 (according to the time showing on the in-flight monitor), at the gate at 11:52.

The flight arrived at the C satellite of Fiumicino airport, with the train going to the main terminal. Passport control was very quick, contributing to a disruption in my plans. My other recent transatlantic arrivals had been in the early morning with many other flights, it took a long time to clear passport control, and the bags were at baggage claim when I got there. This time, after first getting to the bathroom, well down the claim area, I went to look for baggage claim back where the C passengers had entered, but found that my claim was at the B end of the B/C baggage claim. I had checked the bag that I was planning to carry-on on my return, because I thought there wouldn’t be any wait. So here I waited, where my first hope was to catch a train out of the airport at 12:42, but I didn’t get the bag until after that time by my watch. I had set my watch by the time showing on the flight progress monitor on the plane, but the airport clocks were about seven minutes behind that. Even by that, I wasn’t going to try to get to the airport station and buy tickets including a Eurostar seat assignment in five minutes. I found that the right time was something between the two.

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