"Questionable," the woman answers.
"Questionable?" the traveler's husband adds. "I'd call it stupid."
"But wait," says United pilot Oliver Mayes, who's waiting to board the same plane. "I like Stapleton, too, but there's no place to taxi here, and the winds blow all wrong. Every plane that lands here has to maneuver around on the same itty-bitty little runway. I've set out there for 35 minutes with an empty gate waiting for me, trying to explain that to my passengers."
"What do you tell them?" Akers asks.
"Well, I always point out DIA as we come in," Mayes says. "I say, hey, isn't it beautiful? The world's least-busy airport, and some day we might even get to land there."
Down the concourse at the exclusive Red Carpet Club, concierge Jody Oney twists her diamond-ringed fingers together and worries, in a motherly way, about Stapleton's fate.
"I wish I knew what will become of it," she sighs. "When I trade a car or sell a home, I always want to know where it's going, and if it's to nice people. Same with the airport. There's a sentimental attachment."
10:15 p.m., Concourse A
Concourse A is closing up shop for the evening. But since this, along with B, is home to United, which will be the major tenant at the new airport, there's a sense of promise in the air. For some people, anyway. As the last two flight attendants of the night fade away down a moving walkway, their words float back:
"...don't they have some kind of plan for us? I mean, they can't simply tell us to..."
"...sure, it's beautiful, with the tents and all, but it's awful far away..."
At the Marriot Travel Host Bar, now gated and locked, waitress Gentry Barfield ponders her future.
"It's not too complicated, girl," she laughs. "This airport will close, and I'll be out of a job. I'll be sorry. I like it here. One half of the food is actually quite good. I recommend the nachos and the popcorn."
The last soul left on Concourse A is janitor Richard Bonney, who is sweeping a square foot of a fantastically clean carpet with a tiny broom. Bonney has eight years of experience with the maintenance company, and he earned this plum assignment through seniority.
"So you see, I won't quit just now," he says. "I presume I'll go to the new airport and continue. Although I will miss this one. It's close in, and, do you know, I feel that it has better roads. I went out to the air show at the new airport, and I saw bumper-to-bumper traffic, I saw it for myself. So that's my personal feeling about the whole thing."
But change can be good, and there is much to anticipate at DIA. All those granite floors, for example. All that green carpet where the city ran out of granite. There is so much to think about that Bonney stops for a moment, leans on his broom and dreams of the future.
"What will happen to me out there?" he asks himself. "With any luck, I'll get to clean for United. It's an awfully popular airline, and the diversity of peoples from different parts of the globe, speaking languages like Spanish and Chinese!
"And," he adds, a little shyly, "they all give me compliments on how clean I keep the airport. I have my answer ready for them. I say, well, sir, we try.
