A little over 40 years ago (June of 1983, to be exact), I boarded a plane in St. Louis, Missouri for this little airbase in Korea. It was a memorable adventure, to be sure – wearing my military uniform (short-sleeved blues), sitting in the non-smoking section of a DC-10…which also happened to be the section where the air conditioning wasn’t working. That was back in a time where a flight to Osan meant a stop in Anchorage, Alaska. I still remember the stuffed Brown Bear on display at that airport.
Over the years, it’s gotten easier. A whole new airport into which we could fly (ICN (Incheon) – which opened in 2001 – instead of GMP (Kimpo)); direct non-stop flights now from a lot of airports in the US; certainly better planes. I flew on a newer 787 to DFW once where you “closed” the window by pushing a button that turned it black. If you looked really hard, you could see that the sun was still shining brightly outside, but we all had to get our sleep, right?
Incheon Airport is quite the marvel too. It ranked number one in the world for several years, but of course other nations with newer airports have surpassed it (I’ve read it ranks number 4 now). They opened a new terminal in 2018, and now they’re even expanding that one. I flew to Okinawa last month out of Terminal 1, which was just fine, but flew more recently out of Terminal 2, which is even more automated and efficient.
The thing that struck me in these last two trips (to Japan) though is how easy they’ve made air travel overall. I mean, I’m literally flying from one country to another like a trip to the market. It used to be easier to fly into Korea as a military member because I could just use my orders and ID. It wasn’t until the end of my military career that I got a passport at all, and I still remember flying out of Korea the first time with it, having come in on orders and retiring while I was here. They looked at my passport and said, “We have no record of you coming in to Korea,” and directed me to a small room off to the side of immigration. No problems, really. It’s just that they had to re-enter me into their system to let me out of the country!
COVID kind of messed things up, of course. There was a whole new regimen of testing and paperwork and QR codes (returning to Korea about a year ago from the states meant having a COVID test that was less than 72 hours old). And that was after having the shots. Korea finally got rid of that requirement several months ago, but when I came back from Okinawa last month, I still had to fill out a health survey, while others were still using the QR code to get through (when I came back yesterday, even that was gone). Other than that, it was a breeze…both ways. Easier than taking a bus to Chicago…which I actually did in a blizzard on New Year’s eve, 1981…so yeah. Easier. The only slowdown (other than the abysmal line for security at Naha’s international “terminal”) was immigration. And that was easy enough.
I’ve been coming around on some technology. I used to get down on computers being the new wave because I realized that things like email made us less productive in many respects. That’s still the case — I’d say about two-thirds of my “official” emails are pure junk, and many of the others neglect the interpersonal relationships that make for an efficient workplace. But it seems like they got it right in air travel. From checking in, to security (at Incheon Terminal 2, not Naha), to immigration — although I did have my backpack searched rather thoroughly going into Japan (I suppose coming in only with a backpack and nothing else might arouse suspicion). And starting this May, you don’t even have to fill out a customs form coming into Korea if you have nothing to declare.
The world is getting smaller. Sure, it still takes over 12 hours to get from Incheon to Dallas, but that’s a far cry from the time it took 40 years ago. Still, that’s quite a haul for an old man like me. Two hours to Okinawa on the other hand…