Alternate reality airport

This evening I am flying to Los Angeles to attend the annual SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference. If you are in the field of computer graphics or computer animation, that is definitely the place to be.

On my way to the gate, I passed various other gates with flights to places like Madrid and Paris. Part of me asked “Why can’t I just get on one of those?”

If I were at a bus or train station, I could just hop on board, if the vehicle had any seats available. I started to wonder whether it would be possible, in some alternate reality, for airlines to work this way.

“There’s a plane leaving from this gate to Madrid. Why can’t I just go there now, on a whim?” I wondered. Wouldn’t it be cool if I could?

2 thoughts on “Alternate reality airport”

  1. There’s a story, from the days before bar-coded boarding passes, of the guy who mistook the boarding call for “Auckland” as “Oakland” and wound up flying to the other side of the planet.

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