It looked like an easy task. Just come out of the plane, walk a little, give the boarding pass to the pretty woman waiting, and enter a new aircraft that’s going to take you to Copenhagen.

For an international traveler and highly intelligent journalist like me it seemed an impossible task. Others who had come on the same plane turned (probably) right. I turned left. Soon I was lost at Arlanda airpot in Stockholm, in spite of my top-notch brain that had never let me down before. For a second it occurred to me that perhaps sometimes one should just follow the crowd rather than think for yourself.

I checked the monitors to see where the next flight was to depart. For some reason all Swedes want to fly to Copenhagen, so quite a few flights were listed. I glanced the wrong line. It told me to go to terminal 2 to get to Copenhagen.

So, off I shuffle, to terminal 2 just to realize I was in a totally wrong place. I rechecked the monitors and saw that it wasn’t terminal 2 after all, but 5 where I was supposed to be at. The signs at the airport, it turned out, were not much to go on.

I spotted a sign for terminal 5 with an arrow pointing upstairs. I went upstairs to see that there was only a hotel. At another sign, there was an arrow pointing right stating that’s where I’d find terminal 5. So obediently I turn right just to end up in a dead-end.

I asked help from a seemingly terrified clerk. My flight was to leave in ten minutes and it turned out I’d have to run to the opposite side of the airport. So I did. On the way, security officials ran two checks on me, giving an especially delightful touch to the whole experience.

I was late by only 3-5 minutes but still missed my flight. A ground attendant happily informed me that I’d missed the last connection for the night. I was sweating like Nixon.

It was only then that the real fun started. I was booked for another flight in the morning for free. Well, not completely free in my books, I had to pay for a night at a hotel. (Thankfully, now I knew where the airport hotel was. Just the sign for terminal 5 and head upstairs.)

A receptionist quoted the price to me with a kind smile: 170 euros a night, without breakfast.

I started to think about all I had experienced from the climate change point of view. Despite so many environmentalists avoiding flying, not wanting to contribute to polluting the world, it’s not actually that harmful to fly. Naturally one aircraft pollutes more than a car and way more than a cow but in general aviation counts only for few percents of all pollution we humans produce.

It seems that because aviation plays a symbolic role in climate change that we should get rid of it. I think I know how thic could be done. First, go to your nearest airport. Install lots of signs that point to wrong directions. Then make clever passengers like me find the right gate. When people get lost, charge exceptionally high prices for overnighting at airport hotels. We’d quickly have enough discontent to discourage people from flying anymore and the planet is saved. A welcome “by-product” for hotel owners would be the increased revenue.

Please feel free to copy my idea.

Or perhaps I should just re-evaluate my intelligence.

Kirjoitus on osa Th!nk about it -projektia. The blog entry is part of the Th!nk about it project.