My flight delay offered a snapshot of a quintessential aspect of modern America

“These are the most powerful people in New York City and they keep peeking over their shoulders wondering where you are going tonight,” Frank Abagnale snr tells his son, who is wearing his pristine pilot’s uniform as they sit in a swanky 1960s restaurant.

“Where are you goin’, Frank? Some place exotic?”

That scene from Catch Me If You Can came to mind on Tuesday night during a three-hour unwanted exploration of everything the 10pm corridors of Hartsfield-Jackson airport in Atlanta had – and had not – to offer. A week of extreme winter weather had thrown almost every mode of transport into chaos. Few scheduled flights were left uninterrupted and thousands were simply cancelled. During the frenetic final week of campaigning for the Iowa caucuses, various political grandees arrived to voice support for their candidate, describing their dauntless trek through the iced-over interstates as though they’d just crossed the Alps with Hannibal.

The wonder was that anyone went anywhere last week. But the berserk unpredictable weather of January is just an accepted complication of life in a country where many are on the move.

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“You’re sitting beside an emergency exit door, sir,” the check-in desk person said on the first flight. “Are you prepared to assist?”

‘Ya wanna be careful with those emergency doors. They might fly off,’ she said and chortled as she walked away. How we laughed

Well, yes. Maybe. Assist who to do what, exactly?

It was just a mandatory question to which you were obliged to say yes so you could sit by a door. Legal obligations out of the question, the check-in person shook her head and gave a cheerful look from behind her spectacles. “Ya wanna be careful with those emergency doors. They might fly off,” she said and chortled as she walked away. How we laughed. One of us, at least. She was, of course, referring to the recent Boeing incident during an internal flight, prompting an immediate grounding of all such aircraft and an intense bout of media coverage.

As the political wrangling finished up in Des Moines on Tuesday, the airport had an unusually heavy day with interested parties waving goodbye for another four years. Those booked on the teatime flight to Washington via Atlanta had boarded when they were asked to get off the plane again. Some muffled information through the loudspeaker – something about a fuel gauge, none of it reassuring – was issued to a chorus of groans. Travellers were tired, accepting, fretting about connections. Tales of other travel misadventures were traded among seasoned flyers.

A few hours later, in the massive Atlanta hub, it was the same story a hundred times over. Thousands of passengers wandered the desolate consumer corridors, most of them eyeing the same heartbreaking array of wilting salads in one of the few eateries still open. The departures board was lit up with grim news of delays and cancellations, from Mobile to Maine.

The sheer numbers of people in this lone airport on a bitter, humdrum night was a snapshot of how perpetually in motion America is as a nation. The bureau of transport statistics revealed that in 2023, some 853 million passengers took flights, down from the all-time high of 928 million in 2019. It’s a staggering logistical feat and the volume of people means, of course, that the brief interlude when air-flight was luxury and when passengers liked to dress in their best was over almost as soon as it began.

The ground technician, popping in from the hypothermic outdoors, unmasked himself so he could entertain passengers waiting to board with a series of quips – ‘How do you know when a pilot’s walked into a room? Cos’ they’ll tell ya’

Some 35 years have passed since Steve Martin and John Candy shared their notoriously complicated cross-country Thanksgiving trip in Planes, Trains and Automobiles, which became a generational reference point for the arduous nature of cross-country travel title in peak season.

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When the schedule is thrown into disarray by weather, flying is a chore. The security; the dismal restaurants, the cramped seats, the ever-tightening corporate squeeze for profits against climbing costs. But: even though the air staff could not have been thrilled to find themselves operating a flight that left some three hours late, at 12.45am, they were pleasant and courteous. Even the ground technician, popping in from the hypothermic outdoors, unmasked himself so he could entertain passengers waiting to board with a series of quips – “How do you know when a pilot’s walked into a room? Cos’ they’ll tell ya.”

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And know matter how rough the journey is, the vast army of American sky commuters know they will be back again because flying is still the best and fasted way to conquer America’s unfathomable geography. Even if on this night nobody, unlike Frank Abagnale, was going anywhere exotic. Home, wherever that might have been, was more than enough.