Hurry Up and Wait

The Navy scheduled us on an AMC (Air Mobility Command) flight. These flights are managed by the US Air Force, but contracted out to commercial airlines (leave it to the USAF to take an easy job and delegate even that). I didn't realize this at first; I originally thought that they would hand us out parachutes and we'd be sitting with our backs against the sides of a C-130 - but the flight wasn't bad at all. The frustrating part was actually getting on and off of the plane.

In true military fashion, Dave was given reams of paperwork several weeks ago with strict instructions on where to go, how to check in for the flight, and when. A Northwest flight was contracted, so we were to check in at Seattle-Tacoma International. Although the flight was not scheduled until 10:30am, we were required to show at 4:25am. This meant we had to get up at 2am, to get ready and make the hour plus drive to the airport; this is not a complaint just an observation .

Following the instructions, we tried to find the AMC counter "on the mezzanine above ticketing, between the USO and Cinnabon". It was non existant. We inquired at the USO, and they sent us directly to the Northwest ticket counter. The Northwest ticket counter sent us to a long serpentine line of sea bag-toting young men. The last man in line shook his head as we tried to take our place and pointed to yet another line on the other side of the ticketing atrium. Dave, I guess, is accustomed to this modus operandi by now. I was a little less patient.

We finally made our way through the line and checked in. We seriously could have showed up a couple hours later and it wouldn't have made a damn bit of difference.

The bright spot in all of this is that the seat assignments were according to rank. The majority of the passengers were very young, junior guys, so we were assigned to first class. I am guessing that the military would not have paid for us to fly in such luxury on a non-AMC flight!

We arrived at Yokota Air Force Base around 3pm local time. They marched us single file into a cinder block room and had us sit in small plastic chairs and wait. That was a little weird. However, after that, the customs process was very fast, much faster than if we had flown into Narita airport.