Really? The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport? Really? Now, who the heck is the pointy-headed genius who came up with this preposterous polysyllabic title? Whatever happened to the terse elegance of real airport names like LAX, DFW, or JFK?
I have had the privilege of hitching along in the cockpit (or flight deck as it is referred to today, thanks to some prudish lady in Schenectady who filed suit against the airlines, claiming that the term cockpit was sexually offensive and bordering on profanity). I have a son who is a pilot. Everything, from the ergonomically designed instrument panel to the flight controls and nav aids (that's how all of us aviators say navigational: nav), is designed with efficiency and safety in mind. Even an airman's radio communications with local and regional flight control centers wastes not so much as a syllable: Roger, Copy. And my personal all-time fave: 10-4.
So you can imagine the pilots' chagrin when they have to waste that big mouthful of mumbo-jumbo, "The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport." And don't even try to go with the acronym thingy: "BAHCNA." I was on a flight a while back when the first officer used it while communicating with the tower, and the response from the air traffic controller was "bless you."
So the other day I got to wondering about this mouthful of vexing vowels and superfluous syllables while I was reading an article about the latest brouhaha concerning our little off-the-spoke-and-hub flyover landing strip here in town. As I recall it was about the concessionaires being all up in the air (pun intended) about something. I think it was in protest to the Airport Authority turning down their request to charge $12.30 for a wiener. No, it wasn't the price of the wiener that they objected to. The national average for an airport wiener is $14.70, the high being $27.12 at Reagan International in Washington, D.C., to the low of 21 cents in Des Moines. The price disparity seems rather odd considering that both airports are located in cities where there seems to be an overabundance of pork.
No, the Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Authority's objections rose from the term "wiener." Turns out that the concessionaires intended to put it on their illuminated, overhead plastic menu boards. It seems the concessionaires at O'Hare tried to do the same thing last year and that little old lady in Schenectady was equally troubled by the term "wiener."
I called The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport (BAHCNA) (bless you) and was greeted with a recording, "Thank you for calling The Bill and Hillary Clinton Nat ..." when the recording abruptly cut off. Just like that. Kind of like when Joanne cuts me off in the middle of a sentence. I'm thinking the tape machine ran out of tape. All those vexing vowels and superfluous syllables rambling on.
Finally a real person came online. I know this because she said "Thank you for calling The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport" without running out of tape. But the clincher was when she said, "This is a real person, how may I help you?" I told her I wanted to speak to whoever the heck was the pointy-headed genius responsible for coming up with the preposterous name The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport.
She politely told me that she was going to forward my call to the Junior Assistant to the Deputy Director of The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Department of Creative and Wearisome Names, Tedious Titles, and Otherwise Meaningless Sobriquets.
I thanked the real person, who must have been distracted (well, to her credit, it was almost lunchtime and she probably smelled the rich aroma of boiled wieners wafting from The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Homeland Security Officers' styrofoam to-go boxes) because she mistakenly punched in the wrong extension. I was picked up by The Bill and Hillary Clinton National Airport Ground Transportation Officer in Charge of Passenger Interface with Local Commercial Licensed Carriers (aka: taxis). I spoke to a nice man who seemed a bit distressed. Turns out it was his last day on the job. His department was being shut down. Uber strikes again!
Then he invited me to his retirement party (after all, the poor man was a department of one), and transferred my call correctly this time. Some departmental secretary picked up and announced: "Junior Assistant Deputy Director of the Department of Creative and Wearisome Names, Tedious Titles, and Otherwise Meaningless Sobriquets. How may I help you?"
I told her I needed to speak to the Junior Assistant Director, and did he have a pointed head? She said, Huh? I said, Never mind. She transferred my call to his office and let it ring at least 15 or 20 times before she came back on the line and apologized. She had forgotten it was nearly noon and he had a working lunch over Pepsi (no Coke) and wieners with the Committee for the Acquisition and Retention of Quality Personnel Dedicated to Misrouting, Losing, or Utterly Destroying Passenger Baggage.
Then she politely offered that she might be able to answer my question.
I politely replied, no thank you, I think I just figured out the answer.
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Bill Rausch is a freelance humor writer from Little Rock. Email him at williamrausch25@yahoo.com.
Editorial on 05/27/2016