The American In The Airport

So I'm home in Dubai now, lapping up the sun. I spent almost eight hours in airports alone over the last twenty-four hours, and the one thing that really caught my eye was how bad Americans are in airports.

Maybe I was just with some idiots, but this wasn't just a few, this was at least thirty or forty Yanks that could not understand how airports work. The main reason behind this is most likely down to the fact that a lot of Americans do not really leave their country. Most of them tend to drive to places in different areas of the country, and I'm not sure if it's true or not, but I heard an interesting statistic that under fifteen percent of Americans actually have passports. If true, that's crazy.

If you're in an airport waiting to board a plane to start your "vacation", as the Yanks say, try to avoid and queues with our trans-Atlantic friends in. I hate to stereotype, but I have not met one American capable of working their way through an airport without doing something stupid or making a scene. One woman I saw today just walked through the security scanner with all her jewelry on, her belt on, her phone in her pocket. She removed the items when told, but then reached the other side to discover she needed to take her laptop out of her bag for the scan. These are airport basics people!

The day I do meet a airport-compatible American, I will drop this whole subject, because this is surely not what the whole American population is like. Is it?