A Week at the Airport

Anyone who knows me will tell you I have a borderline unhealthy attraction to airports. Be it a major one, like Heathrow or LAX, or one of the smaller, like Ben-Gurion or (my hometown's) Landvetter, I will be the first one to volunteer to give you a ride or to pick you up. And I will linger for a long time after your plane has taken off or waiting for it to land.

I love watching people and luggage and planes and tarmac - just the thought of people traipsing about all over the world makes me giddy. Love it! So, when it comes to Alain de Botton's writing about being hired by BAA to spend a week at Heathrow as their writer-in-residence, I probably cannot be trusted to be an impartial judge (extraordinarily jealous as I am of his all-access show more pass and his opportunity to walk on 27L, where the inbound aircraft touch down).

Although the writing is more philosophical than technical, I really appreciated the behind-the-scenes information and the stories of the travelers and workers that de Botton met. Spending seven days and nights in Terminal 5 and its adjacent hotel, he got to see Heathrow from all angles, those that the rest of us see and those we never will have access to, no matter how much we ask to get a glimpse behind the curtain.

His story should invoke severe wanderlust in just about anyone. I only wish it had been a much longer book (it's only 100+ pages), but since it is a commissioned work, de Botton obviously had some restrictions, time- and otherwise. show less

Say what you will about Alain de Botton, this short volume set at Heathrow's then newly-opened Terminal 5 is as good as it gets. Less reliant on the work of other writers and philosophers than he tends to be in his other books (which I have enjoyed but mention of which causes the rolling of eyes among my friends), this is a magnificent study of a building that fits one of the most important, least contemplated purposes of our lives. Brief, but there's wisdom in its brevity.

https://youtu.be/zvVfg5TOBpE

The author is employed by the owner of Heathrow Airport, given free reign to its new Terminal 5, and encouraged to freely record his observations. He writes about passengers he meets, and expounds upon their lives, loves and past encounters; the airport workers, from the president of British Airways to a restroom attendant; the structure and layout of Terminal 5; and the various and abstracted experiences of being in an airport and flying. Reading this book was an interesting contrast to the Perec book, and what made this a much more interesting read for me was de Botton's personal and philosophical statements and his behind-the-scenes look at the functioning of a modern airport filled with passengers and employees from various lands show more and different backgrounds. show less

OK so Alain de Botton's little jeu d'aerogare A Week at the Airport is a mere 107 pages with lots of photos. Famous-ish writer gets hired by the big corporation that owns the terminal for British Airways; he is to spend a week there in perfect freedom, free to write whatever he wants. Why? Because they can, basically, it's some corporate idea of how to manifest panache. But I don't mean to imply that it is a worthless book, de Botton is keenly observant, very well read and cultured and so able to draw parallels between a man screaming in frustration with Seneca's essay "On Anger" and the fact that air travel and publishing are two industries that never make a profit. He explores the airport from top to bottom: a sad little room where show more people can go to pray, the hangar where planes are repaired, the baggage handling complex in the basement, the shoe shine stand, the swanky Concorde lounge, the bookstore, the beauty shop, security training....... in each place he stops to think about what he is seeing, the weirdness of being trained for a possibility that is a one in ten million odds (that an old lady might be carrying a bomb, say - make that ten billion!), the logistical nightmare of routing baggage, the unexpected elitism of meritocracy. He sees couples weep as they part, others weeping as they meet and ponders how swiftly this moment of high drama is followed by the trek to the grubby car park. De Botton muses about grand architecture, and the fact that unfortunately you also have to take yourself on your dream trips.... it's short, but packed full. However, despite being an interesting project, well-written, insightful and not at all a waste of time to read (how can it be, since it is so short!) I can't give it more than ***3/4 stars. Something of the cold and calculating presence of the huge corporate entity infects the text with a kind of surfacey skittishness, a polish like the high gloss of the building in which de Botton spent the week. show less

Alain de Botton was invited to spend a week at Heathrow, to observe and interpret the moments of the world's busiest airport. I anticipated a literary behind the scenes tour, but instead was rewarded with a different but ultimately more satisfying collection of reflections on the nature of journeys, anticipation, human foibles, power, economics and shoe-shines.
He reminds us that anything and everything can be interesting, even the mundane things we encounter every day, but no longer really see or notice because they are so familiar. If we look with a traveller's eye, we can once again see the wonders and complexities of our own daily worlds. It's a slim little book, littered with small photos accompanying his observations, and is a show more fast but satisfying read. show less

British Airways approached Alain de Botton with an unusual proposal - if he agreed to spend one full week within the perimeter of their primary hub (Heathrow Airport) and write about the experience (with no restrictions on the content of his work), they would sponsor him as Writer-in-Residence of Heathrow and arrange full access to building's private and public regions. The result is less an expose of the inner workings of an airport, or a "How Does It Work" behind the scenes tour, than a thought piece on the nature of travel at the start of the 21st century. He dips into the personal stories of the clasping couples, or tearful children, or the family burdened with a television set and other bulky appliances just enough to whet your show more appetite, without ever going very far into their lives. Perhaps this method, in itself, is a commentary on the nature of the airport, where even a writer-in-residence, watchful at his desk planted squarely in the Departures Hall of Heathrow Airport, is only allowed glimpses before the scene changes. It's a book that does not provide answers so much as it provides questions or, rather, suggests them to you, so that you find yourself wondering a bit more about the fellow travelers and airport workers around you, and the personal histories that brought them to share this transitory space with you. A very quick read that, if you read it properly, should linger in your thoughts. show less

I got really into this book. The format is simple. There are three sections: departures, airside, and arrivals. Each offers its own issues and insight into how an airport operates beyond the short amount of time people usually spend there. There are touching stories of people around for only a fleeting moment. De Botton talks to various people about why they are there, including staff. Some people he just observes and plays the game of trying to guess their circumstances without knowing anything about them. The resulting book is part diary, part philosophical treatise. It made me think.