Quito and the Cargo Cults in the Sky

Don’t forget just this one thing.  Travel is about joy. Travel is — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise — joy.

Have you ever seen some poor sap running through the airport to catch his plane?  Well, that’s about to be me.  My flight was delayed four hours, but my layover is only three, which means I've probably missed my connection.

I am sitting in the very last row of the delayed airplane, but I've already mapped out a mad dash run to the international terminal — a master plan penned in cold sweat — and as soon as I’m off the plane, I'm running faster than ever, dodging around people, no stops, no delays.  The delay, according to the flight attendant, came because the captain’s spare oxygen tank ran low, and a new one had to be flown in from Salt Lake City.  “Totally ridiculous out-of-control  problems are happening every day,” she explains, “it’s the norm since Delta and Northwest flights started merging together this summer.”

So here I am running, and some business traveler, rolling a slate gray carry-on, makes a sudden turn, and I nearly knock right into the oaf.  But no looking back, Erik.  As the culture of air travel continues to change, I just have to evolve.

When I arrive at my gate, the door is closed. Huffing, puffing, I lean in to the gate table.  "Flight's delayed a bit.  We'll begin boarding in five minutes."

Four guys at the gate are wearing dark business suits.  One guy, with dusty brown hair,, waiting to put his two slate gray carry-ons through the X-ray, explains to the other guys that Quito (which he pronounces ‘Qweeto’), sucks, but there is a Papa John’s Pizza near the hotel.  And in the mall, a KFC too.

All but one of the guys has slate gray carry-ons. The short guy, his dual carry-ons are black.

Diamond Platinum Elite

The lady at the gate creates two lines.  One is for general boarding, and the other is for elite boarding.  Then, she goes over to her speaker and announces that “all Diamond Platinum Elite Members" are welcome to board at this time.  This is the cue for the three business travelers with the slate dual carry-ons, who leave the short guy behind.  There is some sort of ceremony in their departure.  It seems the business travelers are making sure the short guy knows he is not Diamond Platinum.  When the Diamond Platinum travelers have disappeared down the jetway, the short guy appears visibly perturbed.  

After a few minutes, the lady at the gate announces that all ‘Platinum Medallion and Gold Medallion’ members may board.  Now, the short guy gets up and heads for the gate through the special line for Elite fliers.  Next, the lady at the gate announces that Silver Medallion fliers may board the airplane.  A jumble of business travelers march toward the gate entrance, each with their rolling carry-ons.

After welcoming families with small children and anybody that needs a little extra time boarding, which somehow now comes after Elite members, the lady at the gate welcomes general boarding.  That’s me.  I walk up to the gate, and, just for fun, I decide to walk through the elite line.

Forty-Eight Pounds of Metal

After September 11, traveling with large format camera equipment has taken on a whole new meaning.  I have forty-eight pounds of metal on my back, and that means, in almost every security check, I get stopped; I get pulled over.  Sometimes, I get to go to the special room around the corner.  And sometimes, this is the fun part, my camera bag fails the bomb test, at which point all sorts of airport resources get diverted.

In all the years since September 11, I have learned that air travel requires a zen patience.  My disposition has been the TSA agent’s dream.  I even try to make them laugh.  In Portland, Oregon, whose airport routinely lands at the top of best-airport rankings, the TSA agents are the kind of people you would most likely divulge all your personal secrets to. They are really just good people, and I actually look forward to the confusion I cause them when I call ‘handcheck on film.’

The security process can be demeaning, and TSA agents sometimes appear not entirely human, but is it possible that TSA agents have less to do with the deterioration of the flying experience than so many are claiming?  Once through the security checkpoints, are TSA agents the ones responsible for the endless string of poor service and bad behavior travelers regularly run into from airport to airport?

When the gate lady looks at me, she can’t quite compute what to say to me.  Technically, I am the only general boarder in line, and also, technically, I’ve gone through the wrong line.  Although I feel no euphoria or enlightenment from having walked through the special Elite line, I realize I have achieved a small victory.  Just a tiny victory against modern airline travel.  A general boarder walking through the Elite line, imagine that.  If all pleasure travelers followed my path, perhaps we could create enough anarchy to take the industry back to the 1950s, when flying was still a glamorous adventure.

There is something about the rise of Elite status travel that has changed the very fabric of air travel altogether.  Elite status offers a sort of combined self-confidence, self-awareness and self-help to the airline industry’s most cherished target market — the super user.  And by dangling the gold watch of status, by enabling airport super users, the airlines are creating a weird sort of loyalty — a loyalty that, at times, appears to have a religious component to it.  Frequent flyers will regularly go on what they call ‘mileage runs’ — mad dash travel in order to accumulate miles to climb the ladder of their frequent flyer program.

Frequent flyer communities are growing everywhere.  At the popular FlyerTalk.com forum, the ‘world’s most popular frequent flyer community,’ travelers talk in an approximation of English that revolves around a culture of maintaining or improving one’s air and hotel status.

I board the airplane alone, and I pass through first class.  There are those four business travelers, all sitting across the aisle from each other in the front row of the airplane.  Behind them, every seat in first class is taken up.  Every first class passenger is sitting oddly upright and staring at me, as if upset by how long it is taking me to get back to coach.  But relax people, I’m on vacation.  I’m enjoying myself.  

Levels of Heaven

I walk to my seat, at the very back of the airplane.  There are a total of 12 people traveling coach, which means I have a whole row to myself.  I push the armrests up and start to doze off.  I can’t help but think about frequent flyer programs in our cultural history.

The caste system of India doesn’t quite fit, because you are born with your caste, and you can never buy your way out of it.  The Mormons have special levels of Heaven.  The general boarders go to the Telestial Kingdom. Lower elite status members go to the Terrestrial Kingdom, and Upper Elite Members reach the Celestial Kingdom, where, in the teachings of the early church, the most faithful might one day rule over an entire planet with their many wives and spirit children.  But in Scientology, you need to keep going through a series of audits, which require increasing levels of spending, in order to achieve the highest levels of enlightenment and euphoria.  That is sounding good for my theory.

Have you ever looked through Scientology pamphlets?  They have a corporate Successories design style to them — colors, charts, stylized depictions of put-together people in cartoonish settings accomplishing personal feats.  I wonder if there is something to the fact that Scientology pamphlets resemble frequent flyer elite status pamphlets?

To reach the highest level in Scientology, which is called Operating Thetan Level VIII, you need to travel.  Specifically, you need to take a cruise on a Scientology-owned cruise ship, called the Freewinds.  By the time you board this cruise to complete the final level of spiritual enlightenment, you may have given the Church of Scientology hundreds of thousands of dollars, a lifetime of frequent spirituality points.  It is the ultimate mileage run.

Waiting for John Frum

But one brand of religious practice seems most fitting of all. Have you ever heard of a cargo cult? It's when a society with little contact with the industrialized world suddenly sees Western goods arrive in huge quantities, and comes to believe that the right rituals, or the right ancestral or spirit figure, will bring that cargo to them too.

In World War II, cargo cults multiplied across Melanesia, as islanders were moved by the American servicemen who frequented the islands, often carrying cargo in quantities the islanders had never seen.

On the remote island of Tanna in the country of Vanuatu, people of the 'John Frum' movement still honor a figure who first appeared to islanders in the late 1930s. According to his followers, John Frum, often pictured as an American serviceman, promised that ships and planes would one day bring them American cargo, if they stayed faithful to him.

Next time you see an elite status traveler eagerly awaiting his summoning through the magic gate, think about the John Frum faithful on Tanna, eagerly awaiting that magic plane in the sky, and the promise of the gold watches it would bring.

Everywhere, people seem to be taking out their frustration on TSA agents, and they are certainly a convenient target.  But doesn't the nonsense really start after the security checkpoint? My theory about the decline of airline travel is that the rise of the frequent flyer class has changed the incentives of both airlines and frequent travelers.  One is dangling a gold watch before a select, but vital, segment.  The other, who is mesmerized by the addictive quality of levels, and lines, points and status and cargo, no longer acts as an honest check and balance to the further degradation of airline quality.  The frequent flyer, happy as a clam with his status, and unable to switch airlines at the hint of bad service, can no longer be counted on to keep the airlines in check.

When I awake, the plane has landed at Mariscal Sucre, the airport wedged into the middle of the city, so close to the rooftops that Quito would finally close it in 2013 and build a new one out on the Tababela plateau.

The next morning, my guide calls my room.  He says he’s ready to go.  I check out of my hotel, and meet Gabriel, who guns the engine, and off we go through Quito, which is pronounced as it’s spelled.  A majestic city, more than 9,000 feet up in the Andes.  Quito is everything you could imagine in a city — steep slopes adorned by apartments and homes, cobblestones, alleys, smoke, palm trees and cactuses, hummingbirds buzzing through the air.  Free hummingbirds, light, tiny, independent hummingbirds, free with joy.