Au revoir means "until next time" — not adieu, meaning "good-bye forever." Tuesday morning, my plane took off about 30 minutes late. The Delta Airlines pilot came on the intercom and explained that because of bad weather in Raleigh NC, where I was headed, he had two choices: Leave later than planned to give the bad weather time to move on before we were landed on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean, or off-load some passengers and baggage before takeoff so he could take on more fuel be sure to have enough to either circle the Raleigh-Durham airport as long as necessary before landing, or fly on — diverted — to a different airport. I thought it was a little odd to hear that, and not especially reassuring.
Then we taxied out to the runway and had to wait even longer because an Air France plane taking off just before us had collided with a bird or flock of birds and maintenance crews had to be given time to go out and clean up the bird debris. Again, what an odd thing to tell us. Oh well. They are fastidious, those airport maintenance crews.
When we finally did take off, I could see the older terminal at CDG airport out the window. It's the round building in the photo above, and it was ultra-modern when it was built in the early 1970s. It's the terminal with giant conveyor belts inside glass tubes that carry passengers up and down through the middle of the circle between the departures and arrivals levels. It used to be called an aérogare — Aérogare numéro un — but they seem to have stopped using that term in favor of the more international terminal [tehr-mee-nahl]. I think I preferred aérogare. "Terminal" sounds so, well... terminal.
What democratic process determined the passengers that got the boot? I agree that speech from the pilot didn't sound reassuring.
ReplyDeleteCDG in the 1970s seemed like something out of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Ahead of its time.
And ou est chm these days: Paris or Virginny?
Hi Diogenes. I'm here in Virginia. Ken and I both flew from CDG on Tuesday morning. His flight was two hours earlier than mine. We had diner together on Monday night and that was the only time we saw each other this year!
DeleteChm and Ken -- how wonderful that you did get to meet on your way out. I once got in line to board a plane at the same time a friend got up to get into line to board her plane just opposite mine. We had enough time to wave to one another.
DeleteYes, Ellen, it was. We had diner the day before at a Japanese restaurant near my place. There was no way we could possibly meet at the airport.
DeleteWe go from no information to TMI.
ReplyDeleteC'est vrai.
DeleteI remember that terminal, from my first trip there in 1991.
ReplyDeleteI remember first learning the term aérogare when I was nearing the end of my year in Paris. I was making sure that I had the correct bus to take me to the airport the next week, so I double-checked by asking the driver. He was very nice, but he stumped me when he kept asking, "Quelle aérogare?". I think he finally just smiled and changed the question to ask which airline :) I never figured out what he had been saying, until I learned the term later!
ReplyDeleteJudy
I flew into the first terminal on my way to Dublin (air lingus) this summer. It is certainly round and was very busy early in the morning.
ReplyDeleteT-1 was ( don't know whether it is now) a pain in that proverbial place when there was a lock-down of the aérogare. God knows how many they had in the early 90's when an unattended bag was discovered. The worse was when one was coming down from those conveyer tubes and had no other place to go.
ReplyDeleteExperienced that when I was flying AC in those days ( was on their loyalty program and was collecting those frequent flyer miles both for domestic flight and long haul)
I flew out of and into terminal 1 many times not that long ago when I was taking USAirways to Charlotte and then on to New Bern. Now I'm flying Delta with an Air France ticket and the flights use terminal 2E.
DeleteThat "old" terminal was the brand new and not totally completed terminal I experienced on my very first trip abroad. Stephane was to meet me there and it turns out he did. But I didn't see him as they made those meeting people to wait away from the gates. I assumed he couldn't make it and took a taxi to Claude's. Stephane assumed I didn't come. No cell phones then. He did call Claude's apartment a couple of days later and we got together then.
ReplyDeleteI don't know how we managed in Paris before cell phones and e-mail. We were short-timers in Paris and didn't even have landline phones in our rooms or apartments. That's why the Illinois office in the Latin Quarter was so important for us. Students could always come there and leave a note for other students that they wanted to arrange a rendez-vous with. We (Fred and me) were the clearinghouse and facilitators. Luckily, Claude and Stéphane were residents and had phones.
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