Exactly five days after that horrific crash /
disappearance of AF447 involving an Airbus A330-200, I was flying from Dubai
We were scheduled to leave at one in the afternoon
from Dubai, and true to airline’s style, all passengers were bundled into the
plane by 12:45. Ten minutes later, while they were serving lemonade and the
passengers fidgeting with the video controls, everything in the cabin switched
off – lights, air-conditioning, videos – everything !! The crew moved around unconcerned, while we
sweated it out in the plane… the outside temperature was furnace-like… The
inside was like... enough to help one understand how the chicken feels inside a
pressure cooker…
After about fifteen minutes, the PA system came alive
with a crackle, and the Captain calmly apologised for the discomfort,
explaining that the backup generator in the plane had failed, and that the
engineers were hard at work to rectify it.
The air-conditioning was restored a few minutes later,
but the air-flow was feeble, to put it nicely. One irate lady passenger, very
obviously an NRI (non-resident Indian,
for the uninitiated) - if one were to deduce from her constant flow of
English exclamations - and living in the
middle-east, judging by the amount of gold she had on her person, kind of
screamed at a passing steward, “Oof, so hot !! Why don’t you on the AC stronger
?” The fellow quietly replied, “After the jet engines start up, Ma’am,” and
went about his work.
Well, the jet engines did start up a good thirty minutes
later, by which time I had occasion to call aside the Chief Steward and ask if something
was seriously wrong. He creased his brow and smiled…. to which I remarked,
“Tell us when to panic.” He said with a grin, “When you see me running towards
the exit.”
The flight took off almost forty minutes late, but the
Captain assured us we would reach Kolkata on time. It was a fairly uneventful flight – except
for the storm we ran into, about 800 Kms west of Kolkata, but we rapidly
climbed to 42,000 feet to fly over it.
They distributed the lunch menu – it had English,
Bengali and Arabic versions of what would be served. The highlight of the lunch
was mutton curry cooked the traditional Bengali way, which was described in
Bengali as “Bangali Mangshor Jhol.” (Literally translated, that means curry of “meat of a Bengali” – Ha ! Ha !)
There is a certain channel on the video monitors in
these planes that provides details about the flight path – something I watch
with great interest as a matter of habit. On this flight, however, they showed
very little of the flight path and more of BBC news clips on that channel, and
I did notice that quite frequently, the hand-held control of the monitor
displayed the channel as “-4” instead of the usual “16”.
While disembarking from the flight at Kolkata, I asked
the air-hostess at the gate why we could not see that flight path details, and
she remarked casually, “I am so sorry Sir, the computer that controls that
channel kept crashing today…”
***
I have decided to carry a prayer book with me from now
on, to help me invoke both gods and “backup gods”, to keep with the times…..They say all planes have life vests, but I think they need to keep parachutes too...
By the way, anyone knows where they sell parachutes to private individuals, that can be part of the cabin baggage ?
By the way, anyone knows where they sell parachutes to private individuals, that can be part of the cabin baggage ?
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