🏁 Axios Finish Line: Airport Psych 101

Plus: Yellen vs. Summers | Wednesday, November 02, 2022

Open in app View in browser   Presented By Meta   Axios Finish Line By Mike Allen, Erica Pandey and Jim VandeHei ·Nov 02, 2022 Nov 02, 2022 Welcome back. Thank you for the flood of thoughtful responses to our question about the future of handwritten thank-you notes! Keep talking to us at finishline@axios.com. Smart Brevity™ count: 577 words ... 2 mins.     1 big thing: What your airport routine says about you Illustration: Sarah Grillo/Axios   There are two kinds of people: those who get to the airport with hours to spare, browse retailer Hudson News and grab a snack, and those who dash through security, yanking their belts on, and bound for the gate with two minutes to spare. Why it matters: How people approach the airport gives us clues about their personality and past. "Traveling is anxiety-inducing, especially nowadays," says Jonny Gerkin, a psychiatrist at the University of North Carolina. People will try to manage that anxiety in different ways, he says. Many early arrivers will try to take control of the situation and leave (way) more than enough time for all possible contingencies. And many late arrivers will deal with the headaches of travel by avoiding thinking about it altogether, and then scrambling at the last minute. Or maybe specific events in your life have molded your airport behavior, Gerkin notes. Your parents' habits might have influenced yours. That one time you missed a flight might have flipped you from late arriver to early bird. Or maybe you're an early arriver who married a late one, and now the two of you have compromised to figure out an airport ritual that works. What's happening: When travel came roaring back after the pandemic, it seemed like the early arrivers had the right idea. Airports had historic delays, lots of cancellations, security lines out the door — and missing flights became more and more common. Yes, but: Too early isn't great either. A number of airport lounges, including Delta Sky Club and American Express' Centurion Lounges, have started limiting how long people can hang out before takeoff, the Wall Street Journal reports. It's three hours tops, unless you've got a long layover or delay. As travel picked up again and work stayed hybrid or remote, more and more people were arriving at the lounges several hours early to take advantage of the free grub and plentiful outlets. "We're not a WeWork," Claude Roussel, managing director of Delta Sky Club told the Journal. Erica here. I like to get to the airport earlier than most people — probably because my mom is an anxious traveler and does the same. My fiancé is the opposite and hates sitting around at the airport for even a minute. But we make it work — and I'll even leave for the airport a (tiny) bit later for him. 😊 What's your airport ritual? Join the conversation at finishline@axios.com. Share this story.     A message from Meta Building more efficient cities will be possible with the metaverse     In the metaverse, urban planners will bring their designs to life and collaborate with engineers, architects and public officials in real time — paving the way for less congested cities. The metaverse may be virtual, but the impact will be real. Learn how Meta is helping build the metaverse.     ✈️ Janet Yellen's theory of airports Image: HarperCollins   In "Yellen," out this week, longtime Wall Street Journal reporter Jon Hilsenrath contrasts two prolific American economists' approaches to travel: current Treasury Secretary and former Fed chair Janet Yellen vs. former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers. "Summers found airports annoying and sought to minimize the time he spent in them," Hilsenrath writes. "He often arrived late, hustling to gates. 'If you've never missed a plane, you're spending too much time in airports,' he liked to say." By contrast, "Yellen's airport theory was framed around the concept of crisis management. She wanted to minimize the possibility of major disruption, such as missing a flight," so invariably she's among the earliest to arrive. 📈 Get Axios Macro for your daily dose of economic news and analysis.   Thanks to Amy Stern for copy editing Finish Line. Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. Axios, 3100 Clarendon B‌lvd, Arlington VA 22201   You received this email because you signed up for newsletters from Axios. Change your preferences or unsubscribe here.   Was this email forwarded to you? Sign up now to get Axios in your inbox.   Follow Axios on social media: