Not Boarding

Why the new wave of airports will make you wish you could stay

- Paul Sephton

God, it’s good to breathe crisp Swiss air. Yeah, I know, right? Clean air is about as much a Swiss stereotype as a man in lederhosen skipping through the foothills with his milking cow on a chocolate wrapper. And yet here I am, in the middle of an airport, and there’s fresh air to be had. Now, let’s backtrack a second, because my talking about fresh air in the overcrowded human terrarium you associate with long queues, bawling children and a mash of announcements in at least two languages sounds paradoxical.

But when you’re in Swiss International Air Lines’ Zurich Airport Dock E, and the SWISS First Class lounge specifically, you have an entire rooftop bar overlooking the Alps from which to huff on as much pure grade-A Swiss oxygen as you like. And that’s not even on the menu in front of me, but more on that later.

Having just been disgorged from the belly of an Airbus, fresh air and espressos are compensating well for my 10-hour flight – in Business Class with its over-achieving wine list. I only have six hours here, but there’s something strange about this layover. For the first time in, well, ever, I don’t really want to leave the airport.

Airports are places I universally level as being one and the same; from Rio to Hong Kong, they’re a convolution of travelators, security checks and aerobridges through which you trudge as quickly as possible to go places, specifically, anywhere but there. The airport is never the place; rather it’s the warren of tunnels through which a million and one people cross paths on their ways to more important places, and god forbid you should have to stay in one for any longer than a few hours.