One of those long faces at the airport last week belonged to me. After my Continental flight from Tucson, Ariz., arrived late in Houston, I double-timed it across two terminals to make my connection.
Too late, I realized as I knocked futilely at the locked jetway door. A missed connection had stranded me and summarily canceled a meeting the next day in Toronto. A pleasant woman at the Continental President's Club gave me a voucher for a hotel and a meal, and I felt like a vagrant as night pressed on through the cold glare of George Bush Intercontinental Airport.
As I trudged downstairs looking for the hotel shuttle, a loudspeaker blared a jaunty Christmas song that was beginning to sound a lot like a cackle. I was just another poor soul stuck at an airport at the end of this, the worst year ever for air-travel delays, missed connections and general airport misery.
Alice Jena looks at those forlorn faces with sympathy. Jena was one of hundreds of volunteers planning to work Christmas Day at Travelers Aid stations in 24 airports around the country. Her post is at Kennedy International Airport in New York.
"People are so stressed-out when they miss a flight," she said. "They're like, 'Oh, I'm going to miss my meeting tomorrow,' or 'I won't get home to see my kids.'
"The things you see," Jena said. "People arrive at the wrong airport. They're supposed to be at La Guardia and here they are at JFK. We've had people come in here who are supposed to be at Newark. We do what we can."
Travelers Aid International, founded in 1851 as a nonprofit, nonsectarian social services movement, has 1,600 volunteers who staff booths at airports and train and bus terminals.
Missing a meeting in Toronto is one thing. But forlorn faces sometimes reflect more critical concerns: family emergencies, abrupt relocations, job searches, desperation, confusion, abject loneliness.
