We travelled to
Sydney on a prop plane out of the
Ballina Airport, your typical tiny one-strip airport with an unstaffed self-return rental car desk where you just drop your keys in a hole and presumably a rental agent will pick them up a few hours/days/weeks later.
This airport was truly off the grid – our tickets were handwritten. Handwritten!?!
Unlike small US airports, it wasn’t just easy to get through security, there wasn’t any security to speak of. As if by law and funded by careless tax payers, there was a metal detector and x-ray belt station, but a sign simply said “CLOSED.”
The same man that wrote out our tickets and took our luggage said “time to board” and we headed for a single glass door with our tickets held out to show. And to further prove the trouble-free approach to flying out of Ballina, no one even cared to look at our tickets before we got on the plane. You literally could have walked into the airport and stepped onto to free flight to Sydney - not a soul would have noticed.
The Ballina Airport was truly refreshing, if not a little shocking, because in my opinion, small US airports are more difficult to pass through. I often find the small-town security employees take their job much too seriously and treat the situation as if West Moose Pass is at Threat-Level Red.
Ballina: just another way to detox from American logistics.
Low tech tickets
No comments:
Post a Comment