Plane Tales From India

 

As air travellers, Indians’ reputation has been zilch class and their eccentricities have provided enough fodder for stand-up comedians. The most notable ones include stuffing up the overhead cabin baggage holder with their unwieldy bags and air hostesses struggling to shut the holders before a takeoff, and the mad scramble to the door as soon as the aircraft comes to halt after landing. 

But of late they have, quite literally, touched a new low with the leaky bladders of male passengers on international flights, where free liquor is served. India’s flagship carrier Air India, which was recently taken over by the Tata Group, has been rocked by two ‘peegate’ scandals on their international flights. 

Interestingly both flights were bound for New Delhi. The first incident happened on board a New York-Delhi flight on November 26 and the second one happened on a Paris-Delhi flight on December 6. The media got the stinky whiff of the first incident only a little before the second one came to light. 

In the first incident, a 34-year-old Shankar Mishra, working with an American bank Wells Fargo, and travelling business class had got drunk and urinated on a 70-plus woman co-passenger.

While the passenger’s conduct was unpardonable, the airline crew’s reaction too fell woefully short. The air hostesses cleaned the victim’s seat and offered her pyjamas to change over, but the crew decided against offering her a fresh seat.

She was told to make do with the same damp and smelly seat with some extra blankets thrown in. When she refused, they permitted her to sit in the “jump” seat normally occupied by flight attendants during take-offs and landings.

Mishra realised his mistake and offered an apology, and the crew readily considered the matter closed. Upon landing, he was not handed over to security and was allowed to walk off after being served a 30-day flight ban.

In the second incident on the Paris-Delhi flight, a man urinated on the blanket of a female passenger while she was away from her seat. In this case, the crew’s conduct was a shade better. They identified and isolated the offender and reported the incident to authorities. The erring passenger was taken into custody by CISF personnel at the Delhi airport.

However, a police complaint was not filed, as both the accused and the victim had reached an understanding. CISF allowed the accused to leave after he tendered a written apology in deference to the victim’s wishes, the airline later said.

After the stink started spreading in the media, Wells Fargo promptly dismissed Mishra. Now the heat was on the Tata Group and its chief N Chandrasekaran issued a statement that the airline crew ‘fell short’ of its duties and derostered the pilot and the crew of that particular flight.

The Director General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) too had ticked off Air India and reminded the airline that it should have reported the incident within 12 hours, and referred the matter to an internal committee to decide on a flight ban.

Meanwhile, Shankar Mishra went incommunicado and Delhi Police appeared clueless and many began wondering whether it is going to be a Komal Sharma redux. For the uninitiated, Komal Sharma has been elusive ever since carrying out an attack on Jawaharlal Nehru University students in October 2020. 

However, in this case, the Delhi Police nabbed Mishra from Bengaluru on January 6 from a guest house. Interestingly, his name was not even registered in the guest house logbook.

Amid all this din, everybody seems to have forgotten about the second culprit who had peed during the Paris-Delhi flight. His name and whereabouts continue to remain a mystery.

Mishra’s bail plea was rejected and he was in 14 days of judicial custody. After that, the trial began at a Delhi court, and Mishra is now singing a different tune. He now claims the woman had urinated upon herself due to her medical condition and pleaded not guilty! This was in contradiction to what he earlier said during the bail plea hearing. 

Air India’s lackadaisical handling of the incident is expected to make it all the more difficult to bring Mishra to book. 

Also Read: Bangalore Short Takes

MH370: Flights of Fancy

The copywriters who penned the slogan and catch line of this advertisement may be ruing that their words have acquired an ominous Cassandra like ring for the ill-fated Malaysia Airlines Boeing 777 flight number MH 370. It all happened on March 8 and this Beijing-bound plane with 238 on board and weighing more than 200 tons managed to fox the wired and wireless worlds and quite literally vanished in thin air. It continues to remain untraceable and like breakers hitting seashore, there is no end to conspiracy theories ranging from educated guesses to downright ludicrous yarns.

Broadly they can be categorised into two school of thoughts - mechanical failure and sabotage, with an overwhelming majority subscribing to the latter. After all who doesn't like some high voltage drama. Within the sabotage school there are two sub divisions. Those who believe that terrorist groups may have hijacked the plane to an unknown destination or carried out a suicidal mission. The others point their needle of suspicion towards the pilots' character.

The former group buttresses their argument by pointing out that the two Iranians with fake passports were present in the plane. However, the fact that Iranians have little sympathy for Al Qaeda, as they happen to be Shias, punctures this argument. Some say maybe it is the Hezbollah, but then this Shia militant group has little interest beyond Israel and the Arab world.

A tiny minority is floating the theory that the Chinese minority Uyghurs may be behind it. The theory seems plausible as most passengers were Chinese, but they have little wherewithal to carry out such audacious terror attacks outside the Chinese soil. Some even believe the aircraft may be lying tucked away in some Central Asian republic, though one wonders whether they have such long runways to land a Boeing 777.

All these theories fail to explain as to why no terrorist outfit has claimed credit or demanded ransom. Terrorist groups are as publicity crazy as politicians and hence it is inconceivable that they would let go such a temptingly high profile incident like this.

There are also legions of conspiracy theorists casting aspersions on the pilots. The fact that the transponder, which provides details regarding planes identity to radar operators on the ground, was switched off and the presence of a flight simulator at senior pilot Zaharie Ahmad Shah's home has them in a tizzy. They think he had some sabotage plan up his sleeve and carrying out his homework, with many smelling terrorism link. The fact that he was a distant relative of Malaysian opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim added ample grist for them to chew upon.

Then there is this small minority which believes it was a straight forward accident and discounts all conspiracy theories. The proponent of this theory is a Canadian pilot who wrote in Wired.com that an electrical fire accident may be the culprit. He claims that would have made transponder dysfunctional and the pilot may have veered off the normal course to reach the nearest available airport. It may be noted that the plane was carrying highly flammable lithium batteries. For Boeing this is something they can ill-afford as they had barely recouped from bad publicity over heating Lithium batteries in its 787 Dreamliners.

Now for the ludicrous - lightning, asteroids, alien attack, god's wrath and the like. But what takes the piece of cake is an explanation given by 'soul healing' expert which was even telecast on a Kannada TV channel. He had two people sitting on airplane type seats and hypnotised them into believing they were aboard MH370 and they uttered what they ‘saw’! I guess nobody can beat that.

Also Read: Bangalore Beat