Two weeks ago, I got to fly back to My Beloved Texas to take care of some wonderfully long-overdue business at Baylor. This involved flying from Norfolk to Austin–a route which is remarkably lacking in direct flights. Thus, on the way to Austin I found myself briefly in Cinncinnati, Ohio, and the way back saw me a little less briefly in Atlanta, Georgia.
Hey! That’s two new states that I’d never been to: Ohio and Georgia! That brings the list up to four–the list, that is, of states that I have “been” to, but only to an airport. The complete list is:
Illinois – O’Hare is all I’ve seen of that fine state, if you don’t include a wonderful aerial view of Chicago and Lake Michagan.
New Jersey – My NJ experience is limited to the Newark airport. And the highlight of that visit was the only time I’ve seen NYC (again, from the air) and the only time I ever got to see the WTC.
As well as the aforementioned:
Ohio – Although my wife said the caller-ID said I was calling from “Boone, KY”!
Atlanta – It was late, the flight was delayed and crowded, and I had a middle seat. But for an airport, it has a great bookstore!
Where states/provinces/countries have you “visited”… sort of?
The longest runway at Detroit Metro was under construction. After the plane was loaded, some wise ass decided that it was too heavy to take off on the shorter runway.
The powers-that-be decided to lighten the plane by unloading the fuel that they just put in. Fuel, ferchrissakes! I would have been much happier without my luggage…but that’s another story.
To make a 7 hour flight into 13 hours, we had to make a pit stop in Shannon, Ireland to fill 'er up before going on to Frankfort.
Not only did we not see the scenery, they wouldn’t even let us off the plane!
Texas Four times, on a trip to Venezuela and another to Mexico. Houston is Continental’s Latin America hub. Florida My flights to and from Chile stopped in Miami. Italy I’ve been all over Europe, but somehow have avoided Italy. Except for the Rome airport, traveling between Zurich and Athens.
Mr. S’s brother works for an industrial knitting-machine company. His job is to go out to factories that have these machines and set up or troubleshoot them.
So he has been to exotic and interesting places all over the world, one or two days at a pop: airport, cab, hotel, cab, factory, cab, hotel, cab, airport. Not enough time for sightseeing, except out the window. Neat/yuck!
Minnesota while going to California or something (I can’t quite remember)
I think that’s the only state for me.
A country one is Cape Verde, on the way from Atlanta to Johannesburg. The runways in Atlanta were undergoing some kind of construction or something. Whatever runway the planes had to use was too short for us to take off with the full load of fuel, so the flights to South Africa made refueling stops in Cape Verde.
I was in Tokyo’s Narita airport for an hour or so on my way to Thailand. If we count that and one other layover, I’ve been in six countries this year. (Looking for seven on winter break!)
I have a vague memory of running down a long airport hallway with my parents, shlepping lots of luggage and a baby brother in a stroller. I was maybe five. My parents tell me this was in Atlanta, trying to make a connection to Florida, when we had seven minutes to get from one end of the airport to the other. I’m taking their word for it, but I’ve certainly never been to Georgia any other time.
I guess I’ve just mostly been on direct flights - I can’t complain.
Nebraska (Omaha airport, many times)
California (Los Angeles and San Francisco airports)
I’ve been through Texas by plane, train and bus but have never stopped long enough to get away from a bus/train terminal or airport, although I was once delayed 4 hours in Houston.
I’ve only been on plane layovers in Oklahoma, but I took a bus/car trip there with a two hour layover, wandered around Oklahoma City for a bit and went through a Burger King drive-through – don’t know if that counts.
I saw Phoenix through airport windows - that was lovely enough to convince me that I should go back to visit at some point. Puerto Rico was another airport I visited; that’s about all I can think of at the moment.
I’ve connected through Denver twice, so that’s 2 landings and two takeoffs… I have yet to see the city. I think it’s a clever plot by the CIA, there really is no Denver, just an airport in the middle of Colorado.
Now that I think about it, there aren’t any states where I’ve been only to the airport. It used to be that all of Georgia and North Carolina I’d seen were the Atlanta and Charlotte airports, but that changed on one of my trips between New York and Texas, when I chose to hug the coast more than usual. (My normal route goes Texas Louisiana Mississippi Alabama Tennessee Virginia West Virginia Maryland Pennsylvania New York, and that one went Texas Louisiana Mississippi Alabama Georgia South Carolina North Carolina Virginia Maryland Delaware New Jersey New York.)
I’ve only seen Houston from an airport/airplane window and I spent the night at midway in Chicago once. I have “lived” for 9+ weeks in Texas for basic training and school for my current job. I spent 21 years in Illinois without ever visiting Chicago until after I moved away and spent the allready mentioned night. So there are no states I’ve only been in the airport for, but there are a couple of cities.
Phoenix six to eight times and Las Vegas four times. Guess who flies America West (whose hub is in Phoenix and which features transfers in either Phoenix or Las Vegas on virtually every flight.)
Honolulu, Hawaii, while on a flight from LAX to Manila in the Philippines. We sat on the tarmac for an hour at 2 am while the plane refeuled and changed pilots.
Tokyo, also while flying to the Philippines, though technically I did see a hotel corridor and room. I was flying courier, and the courier company put me up in a hotel room for the 8 hour layover. The hotel, however, was an airport hotel, so I never left the airport (and legally couldn’t anyway, not having a visa for Japan)
Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates. Stopped over there flying from Perth to London on Royal Brunei (we went Perth - Brunei - Dubai - London). Brunei doesn’t count cos we had a 24-hour stopover there on the way back.
Paris - I’d fly into Paris in the evening, stay at an airport hotel, catch an early fight to Arles, visit the customer, then back to London via Paris again.
Rome - Flew in, travelled on a motorway ring-road to the hotel, same ring road to customer site, then ring road back to the airport. It could have been Basingstoke for all I knew.