And leave the driving to us

[austin_dern]

The Michigan Flyer normally loads passengers from just outside a hotel, nice and convenient and easy to locate. Unfortunately, that spot was closed for an art festival the day I was leaving. They were loading at another spot --- not far from that, actually, it turns out --- but we left extra, extra early because all of mid-Michigan is torn up for construction. You will suspect me of exaggerating. I am not, I promise you. Getting to East Lansing --- and we are on the east side of Lansing, where it's barely a ten minute walk to the East Lansing city limits --- is pretty much impossible, because every route we might take is either closed or severely limited or impassable due to backed up traffic. But we got there with a comfortable ten-minute margin before the bus left.

There was a longer margin between my getting at the Detroit airport and my flight leaving, as the Flyer runs every two hours and of course it'll be just a little bit out of synch with perfect timing. I can't seriously complain, but shall.

One of Frontier Air's gimmicks, besides being so cheap to fly between Detroit and Trenton that it's worth doing, is that their planes have animals painted on the tail and winglets. When I checked in online their system thought I'd be flying the Fox; in fact, it was the Penguins (a quartet whose names were given by the pilot a couple times, and which I missed every time).

The Trenton airport is tiny, something I mentioned in the humor blog but will come back to because when I arrived I only saw it in nighttime. I've flown often into or out of airports small enough you walk on the tarmac instead of through a jetway, but this ... well, the baggage carousel was small enough to fit in our living room, and rather than hide the unloading and such behind a wall or underground or whatnot, they just opened up the door and the guys lugged bags off the cart and onto the carousel. I was delighted by the tininess of it.

I was more delighted by the rental counter, not nearly so big as a mall food court counter. The guy explained that the car would probably be in parking space number six, or if it wasn't, it'd be somewhere near there (it was near there), and yes, technically, the rental car counter would be closed when I returned it the next Sunday but they had a drop box for the keys and I should just leave it somewhere in the parking lot. In the agency's reserved spots, ``if you can'', but if I had to leave it somewhere else it was all right, ``we'll find it''. He did ask that I write down directions if I had to leave the car somewhere odd, though.

If you're not smiling at this, then, you're not getting into the spirit of the wonderfully tiny airport.

Trivia: Among the products exhibited at the Napier Tercentary Celebration, 24-27 July 1914, were the Archimedes, by Glashutter; Colt's Calculator, by Teetzmann; the Comptometer, by Felt & Tarrant Manufacturing Company; the Hamann's ``Mercedes-Eukid'' Arithmometer, by O Sust, Kgl Landmesser; and the ``Millionaire'' Calculating Machine made by O Steiger. Source: Before The Computer: IBM, NCR, Burroughs, and Remington Rand and the Industry They Created, James W Cortada.

Currently Reading: Tudor Historical Thought, F J Levy.

PS: How Big Is This Number? in case you'd like a quick little mental-math puzzle.

Comments

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Of course, the big question is: do they have a bunny plane?

Does sound like quite a little delight of an airport. ^_^ Closest I've come, I think, was the one in Trilobyte's hometown of Medford - curiously labelled "International", although as far as I knew, flights were essentially just to the Bay and San Diego (with United) and Portland (with Horizon). There too, you walked out to the plane, and up the staircase, which somehow seems quite charming, versus the usual, newer method of walkways, so you never actually leave the airport until you're on board.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Yes, they have both a cottontail rabbit, "Stu," and a snowshoe hare, "Jack." The hare is one of the particular "stars" of the fleet as he was featured in some of their commercials.

http://www.flyfrontier.com/fun-stuff/animal-tales-continued

[porsupah.livejournal.com]

Awww! Both such cuties! I was a little surprised to see them feature not just one, but two leporines - but then, they do seem to've made some reasonable diverse choices, including a couple cetaceans, and quite a dashing ermine.

Ah, indeed! A quick peek on YouTube brought up Jack & Foxy (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QjwR4hp2KzU). ^_^

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Yeah, Jack having a crush on Foxy was one of the recurring themes. This is the one I remember best.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03vfsWp815A

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

These are all commercials I had missed, although I believe some of them were playing on the in-flight entertainment system. Since I didn't bring earphones I didn't hear audio, but I did at least see things like the cougar saying things to the mid-air.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Trenton's airport doesn't make claims of being international; they're working hard enough on getting a reputation as existing. (Seriously; they're threatened with being shut down entirely by sequestration firings, and have only sort of been hanging on otherwise.)

Lansing's airport, considerably larger, does bill itself as an international airport. The interesting thing is it's not flights to the nation you'd expect that make it international.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I'd figure Mexico? That's what I'd expect even without mention of unexpectedness; USA/Canada over-the-border flights are less prevalent than most folks would expect.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

They have international flights that are seasonal and geared toward students on Spring Break, which include destinations in Mexico but also Jamaica and a couple of others I forget.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Suddenly I'm curious what international destinations Albany's airport offers, though not quite interested to the point of checking. Let me go check.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I have been coming to learn how relatively rarely cities close to the border find reason to fly into Canada. I suppose there's a point where it's quicker to drive, or if one did need to fly to Toronto or Montreal to do it by way of Detroit instead.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I suspect there are certain complexities in running just-over-the-border flights that make them less profitable than comparable in-country flights. For longer travels things tend to head to truly International Airports like Heathrow and JFK and the like, and then you hop smaller flights from there.

There's also a certain too-short-a-distance-to-fly. Like New Haven's flights all going to Philly, instead of NYC, because you're just going to take the train to NYC but Philly's a whole 3.5 hours.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

I'm hoping I'll be able to ride Frontier at some point, though they've pulled out of the northeast (The closest is LaGuardia, which flies only to Denver and would require train-or-Mom to avoid horrendous parking costs). I've seen Jack, Foxy, and others before.

Trrenton does sound delightfully tiny an Airport, much like new haven. They have.. calling it a carousel implies it moves. They open up a door and slide luggage onto about 20-feet-wide of tilted shelf. It doesn't move, it doesn't need to. People grab their stuff quickly enough there's rarely anything atop anything else. There's a food 'cart'. It's about the size of an NYC Knish cart.

--Chi

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Well, we'll see what does happen. Airlines come and go, and maybe someone else might pick up on the gimmick of personalizing planes in this way.

I would like to get a chance to see New Haven and the luggage shelf, now. Quite fun.

[chefmongoose.livejournal.com]

Picture a tiny baggage carousel; then open it up to be a line instead of a circle. That's about it.