A man lived, hidden away, in the Chicago airport for three months
Lesson summary
Welcome to Plain English lesson number 336. I’m Jeff; JR is the producer; and the full lesson can be found at PlainEnglish.com/336. A little hometown news for you today, local news from Chicago. A 36-year-old man was found living in the airport. He had been there for three months. We’ll tell you what we know on today’s lesson. The expression today is “rely on” and we have a quote of the week.
Three months living in O’Hare
Prior to COVID, there were times I felt like I lived in the airport. I ate there, I worked there, I drank at the bars there, I sometimes slept there. As part of my job, I would travel most weeks to at least one other city, sometimes two or even three other places in the same week, sometimes interrupted by thunderstorms, snowstorms, changes in schedule, canceled flights, flights diverted to other airports, and all the other hassles of regular business travel. There were times I felt like I was living in the airport.
But that was an exaggeration: in fact, I was living in hotel rooms. No, I’m joking, even that is an exaggeration. At least I had my home to return to at night after a long day or week on the road.
Thirty-six-year-old Aditya Singh was living in the airport—living at the airport for three months. He arrived at Chicago-O’Hare International Airport, Terminal 2, on October 19, on a flight from Los Angeles. He was on his way home to India, but was too afraid to continue his journey, so he stayed within the security zone of the airport until he was caught in late January.
He spent his days in the gate areas and wandering the vast terminal concourses of one of the world’s biggest airports. He relied on handouts from generous strangers, who bought him food from the many restaurants. The security checkpoints are closed between 11 pm and 4:30 am, but the inside—the secure area—never closes because flights arrive late and leave early. For that reason, the gate areas never technically close—airport employees never sweep through and ask people to leave.
There are places to sleep, but O’Hare purposely doesn’t have many sleep-friendly areas, for obvious reasons. Most seats are either staggered or have fixed armrests, preventing people from stretching out. That’s all not to mention the fact that the lights are on all night, it’s cold, and there are announcements playing on a continual loop. But the man may have found a place to sleep in the employee-only areas.
He had access to employee-only areas courtesy of an airport employee badge. An operations manager of United Airlines misplaced his security badge on October 26; Mr. Singh picked it up and may have been using it to move around and avoid suspicion ever since. Two airline employees eventually confronted him and asked to see his ID. He showed the ID that the other employee had lost months before. Mr. Singh was charged with criminal trespass and theft.
The Chicago Department of Aviation, which regulates security at the airport, released a statement saying that Mr. Singh did not pose a security threat while he was there. Maybe so, but it was still a grave security breach. And with passenger volumes down sixty to seventy percent, it’s even more surprising that nobody noticed the same person, day in and day out, night in and night out, not doing anything and not getting on any flights. Prior to the pandemic, O’Hare was the world’s busiest airport when measured by number of takeoffs and landings and served 84 million passengers a year.
Fingers started pointing right away. Some security experts said there was no excuse for such a breach after so much money has been spent on airport security in the last two decades. The judge in the case was shocked that it was possible. Others said that the security agencies are under-staffed and employees are too stretched to notice individual travelers or adequately assess potential threats. One passenger had an interesting point. He said that in Europe, there’s a culture of reporting people for suspicious behavior, but in the United States, people tend to leave you alone—almost to the point where individuals are invisible.
Mr. Singh came to the US from India to pursue a master’s degree. He had been living with roommates in Orange County, California, until he decided to go back to India in October. His return journey, though, will be delayed once more.
At Mr. Singh’s first court appearance, the judge denied him permission to go home. He was, however, able to post bail, with the assistance of a local non-profit. The non-profit is helping him with housing while he awaits his trial. He has been ordered to wear an electronic monitor.
All alone in the airport
That’s a sad story. It’s true what that other passenger said, though, about feeling invisible. O’Hare is a busy airport, and it’s very big, but it’s not that big. The corridors are long, but when it’s empty late at night, it’s very quiet. It’s an eerie feeling being there past midnight, in one of the world’s biggest transportation hubs, and it feels like nobody’s around—it’s silent except for the white noise of announcements, air conditioning, doors opening and closing in the distance, a machine beeping here and there.
But it’s quiet late at night. There are people walking around—cleaning crews, people closing up restaurants, security, obviously airport employees. And that other passenger is right—even when there are few people, nobody really makes eye contact, nobody really notices you. If you’re dressed in a presentable manner and if you look like a traveler, people will leave you alone. They won’t even look twice.
I really feel bad for this guy. He was no security threat. Yes, he was walking around with a badge that wasn’t his. And obviously you can’t live in the airport. But he wasn’t harming anyone—if he were doing any harm, he wouldn’t have been undetected for three months. I hope he gets home safe.
Great stories make learning English fun
