The Fear and Loathing of Airport Terminals

Often regarded as a highlight of a city or country, the airport has always been about futuristic designs and sophisticated engineering and management. Hundreds of millions are invested in international airports to ensure their expansions and maintenance in order to accommodate more travellers and businesses. Without a doubt, one can anticipate the conditions of a certain country or city just by landing in their airports.

Behind the tall walls of glass, skylights, shiny kiosks and counters, bright and colourful shops, and neverending ribbons of walkalators, there are more subtle and beautiful facades to an airport. That said, there are also darker parts of the airport that come alive at night, especially in the self-contained, segregated international terminals.

Waiting at the boarding gate or in the terminal itself is usually associated with excitement and joy for a vacation traveller, but it can also be associated with boredom and exhaustion for a seasoned business traveller. However, there are some who associate waiting at the gates with fear as if they live in a world of Wes Craven's Final Destination movies. Its not hard to see why, especially among Malaysian travellers, after three saddening and fearful aeroplane incidents that happen within a year.

For me, I have my own share of excitement and fear while waiting at the airport. Quite recently, I was listening to a Diana King interview on the local radio and she confessed that she used to fear flying and would rather travel across the country via slower rail transport. Although she has overcome that fear, flying still gives her a mixed emotion of fear and excitement at the same time. I can totally relate to her story. Turbulence still gives me terrible frights and the only way of keeping my mind of it is by reading or sleeping.

So far, there have been two horror incidents that have remained vivid in my huge box of horrible memories. The first happened in the plane while the other happened in the KLIA international terminal.

The former happened while the plane was taking off. As the plane was gathering speed and slightly lifting the front off the tarmac, the pilot slammed the brakes hard and everyone had their faces planted into the seats in front of them. My heart and most possibly the hearts of all that were onboard the flight skipped a huge beat when that happened. Fortunately, there were no serious casualties from that incident. The pilot then turned the plane back to the terminal while we waited adrenaline-rushed and confused. A few minutes later, the pilot appeared from the cockpit with his hands clasp tight in front of him. He apologized for the scare and explained that a little sparrow managed to fly into the cockpit while we were taking off. With the sparrow safely trapped in his hands, the pilot stepped out of the plane and passed it to the ground crew. Despite that huge scare, we were relieved that the incident had nothing to do with the plane's condition and after we landed at our destination, it became a light-hearted incident and an interesting dinner table topic that night.

The second incident was way scarier and I have not told anyone else about it for it still gave me the shivers. I've decided to share it here as I believe that I am ready to share my story and this would be the best platform to do so.

I arrived in KLIA from Dubai in the wee hours of the morning. During that time, the airport is already in lock down and the international terminal is segregated from the main terminal as the connecting trains are not in operation until later that morning. Having nothing to do as most of the shops are closed, I decided to watch a movie at the lounge. The awesome thing about it is that they were showing Machete 2, which is now one of my favourite films.

The scary thing is what happened while I was watching the movie. A young middle eastern man, perhaps a few years older than me, sat down next to me and started having a conversation with me. At first he was asking where I was from and where am I headed to. Everything seemed fine as its normal to have such trivial conversation with strangers you've just met. Then he started asking me questions about what I thought about guys being friends. I was slightly confused and I told him it was totally normal for guys to be friends but he was actually asking me about what I thought about men in gay relationship. So I told him that I have friends who are gay and I'm totally cool with that. Then came the hammer blow. He asked me if he could kiss me. I was shocked and told him that I am a straight male but he continued to pursue the subject until I decided to ignore him.

He left shortly after I ignored him. After the movie, I decided to take a walk around to keep myself awake until I bummed into him again. He asked me if I changed my mind and would like to take up on his offer. I refused his offer and walked off. Then I started thinking, if I were to head into a washroom now, with him prowling around the terminal, would I be assaulted in there as there is nobody else around at that time who would be in the washroom at the same time as me. The remaining people there would be sleeping. For the next few hours, I had to avoid the washrooms until the trains are working again and I can finally head back to the main terminal where there would be more people.

That was the scariest incident I've ever had at the airport and after that I've began to understand how girls feel after being randomly approached or catcalled by men on the street, pubs or clubs. It is not cool to catcall a random person as it will strike fear into that person more than anything else. I was lucky that the person had the mind to ask me first rather than being ambushed by him. Lesson is, always be careful when you travel and try to stay somewhere that has a crowd if you're waiting alone at the airport. And no catcalling. That is rude and scary.