I once happened to go to an event for old Volkswagen cars. I noticed among the old cars carefully kept in perfect condition, a wing with several cars with signs of rust. I thought it was strange and later a friend explained to me that it was a trend in the subculture of old-school car owners.
Hartsfield-Jackson here in ATL has a jumbotron so you can watch people coming into the baggage claim area of the airport!
Does any other airport do this?
Hmm, I’m not sure I’d like being on a huge jumbotron screen. It’s bad enough that I’m being monitored by a couple of people in a back room at the airport, but now I’m up on a huge screen for an audience? Eesh. Just another reason to stay off of planes.
Be careful you don’t pick your nose, or um, your seat!
To me, that says they don’t have enough security people watching cameras and someone’s job is to keep an eye on several of those screens while doing something else. Not good. 
Exactly. 
Mostly, just pulling up my jeans because I don’t want to wear a belt going through Checkpoint Charlie.
People are only on for a couple of seconds at most. The exit there is right behind the screen, so after you see people coming up, then you see them IRL coming out on the left or right… which is a little weird!
I don’t know if that’s the case - they do have a security guy sitting off to the left, who is there to make sure that people don’t try to go down that escalator (as they’ve not been through TSA at that point. It could be, but I think it was just a thing they added to help people see their folks arriving. While there, there was about 20 or so people hanging out waiting with us and people kept going over as their folks arrived to give them hugs. Saw several lovely reunions - like grandparents seeing their grandkids and such like… I doubt that they’d skimp on security at Hartsfield-Jackson. The city takes the airport seriously (in part, because the GOP will occasionally threaten to put it under state control rather than city control). Any incidents are usually taken care of quickly, and it’s a very well run airport, from what I’ve seen.
You have to pay extra to pick your seat.
Except on spirit airline, where you have to pay extra to have a seat at all!
I kept meaning to post this. Some weeks ago while at work I hear two coworkers in my dept talking about… Alf? I get up and butt into their conversation. Apparently they wanted to see who could draw Alf from memory better. My attempt is on the very left 
Not bad!
that was my take. it’s a service to help people, not a surveillance thing, but yeah I’m sure it’s also monitored, but there’s probably 50 cameras you don’t know about which only security monitors before you get to the baggage claim.
I haven’t flown in forever, they didn’t have this last time I was there.
the 2 features of HJ that make it the best airport in the world, imo, are:
- there’s a train inside the airport that takes you from your far-flung gate to where this camera is in the main terminal.
- there’s a Marta (Metro Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority) station IN THE MAIN FUCKING TERMINAL! you can just ride the train from wherever DIRECTLY INTO the airport. no cabs. no getting friends to give you a ride. it’s fucking awesome.
I did some construction work at the MARTA station in Hartfield-Jackson back in '95 before entering the Army. Specifically the ticket station and associated offices. There was so much construction help needed in ATL for the Olympics back then that we would fly down from Chicago to work for a few days at a time, then fly home again.
International arrivals at Melbourne has a screen halfway between the doors where arriving people leave the secure area. It makes sense there because the two exits doors are a long way apart, and if you’re waiting to welcome someone at the wrong door you can miss them. The screens mean you can see who’s arriving at the other door, and race off to greet them if you need to.
Indeed! I WISH MARTA had more train coverage around other parts the city (and out to other cities - like a train out to Athens, for example), but access to the airport is not a problem at all.
That’s interesting! I don’t know if people realize how much the Olympics transformed the city… The stadium that Georgia State owns now was formerly Turner Field, specifically built for the Olympics (apparently, under budget, on time, with union labor, according to one labor oral history I helped transcribe a few years back). Out near where I live, next to Stone Mountain Park, there was a tennis park built for it that they just tore down a couple of years back…
You can’t go to Bunnings (the Australian great big hardware store) on a weekend without seeing shopping carts with dogs riding in them all over the place.