Air Babylon

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  ‘We’ve got a video of him coming off your plane,’ he says. ‘Flight zero zero five, gate fifty-six C. You can’t get out of it that easily.’

  ‘Right,’ I say. It was worth a go. I’m just trying to save myself some time and the airline some cash. ‘Any documentation at all?’

  ‘Sweet FA,’ says the officer.

  ‘OK.’ I sigh. ‘Luggage?’ The officer shakes his head. ‘Great. Nothing at all?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  His thin lips break into a smile as he knows exactly what I have to do next. We both have visions of me in rubber gloves shifting through shit in the aircraft toilet as I search for a ripped-up passport.

  ‘I’d better go and have a rummage and see what I can come up with,’ I say.

  ‘Yes, you had,’ he smiles.

  ‘Right,’ I say.

  ‘In the meantime, I’ll see if I can get hold of an Indonesian translator.’

  ‘Good. And I’ll get Andy to check through the passenger list. Someone must know who this man is.’ I turn to the illegal and tap him on the shoulder. ‘OK?’

  He looks up. His large dark eyes are haunted. They look straight into mine. His misery sends a jolt right through my whole body. Jesus Christ. Why do they put themselves through this? Is it really worth it? Where must he have come from for this to sound like a good idea? I really want to tell him to get on a plane and go home. His admin hell has only really just begun. He has months of limbo ahead of him. And for what? Some shit, poorly paid job? Life’s not that brilliant over here.

  ‘I’ll be back in a while,’ I say to him. I’m not sure if he speaks English. Sometimes you enunciate away like a moron only to find out later that the man you presumed to be some dumb farmhand is in fact an emeritus professor of mathematics at some far-flung university with a perfect grasp of four languages, including English. He takes hold of my hand in both of his and squeezes it, like I might be able to help. It makes me feel even worse. ‘I’ll see you later.’ I smile and nod at him. This has to be one of my least favourite aspects of the job.

  Walking along one of the many corridors back towards the gate, I console myself that I might at least be able to slip off and have a cheeky cigarette before having to don my rubber gloves. We’re not allowed to smoke at all in the terminal these days. We used to be able to puff away at will, or at least in the smoking areas along with the rest of the general public. But now it’s a disciplinary offence to be seen with a fag in hand – they confiscate your airside pass. So if I can, I always find a route that takes me outside and out of view. I have a sixty-a-day habit. Fortunately I get them cheap. But that’s mainly half-cigarettes snatched en route, rather than whole fags languidly enjoyed over a coffee.

  I put a call through to Andy, just to keep him up to date with what’s happening.

  ‘Andy, mate, it’s me. What are you up to?’

  ‘Jesus bloody Christ,’ he comes back. ‘I’ve only just got rid of that little fucker.’

  ‘What? The minor?’

  ‘Honestly, mate, if I had my way, all kids would be shot at birth. Or born as adults. Thank God I’m fucking gay and I’ll never have to deal with them. He was a right pain in the arse. His parents were forty minutes late. It’s a wonder they turned up at all. I wouldn’t have, if that had been my child. I thought ten-year-olds were supposed to be sweet. This one was a right fucker.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘What didn’t he fucking do? He ran off, demanded sweets, hit a granny, attacked me with his plastic fucking toys. And he wouldn’t stop talking. With the hangover I’m developing, it was a nightmare.’

  ‘Having a happy birthday?’ I ask.

  ‘Bloody marvellous,’ he replies. ‘Anyway’ – he lets out a long, loud sigh – ‘I’ve delivered the little shit.’

  ‘Yes,’ I reply. ‘And could you now have a look through the passenger list to see if we have anyone who might be our illegal.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘My guess is he’s Indonesian and got on at Singapore.’

  ‘OK. Travelling alone?’

  ‘Looks like it.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No, nothing I can help you with. Oh, male, obviously, and in his thirties.’

  ‘Don’t mention the “T” word,’ moans Andy.

  ‘Oh, sorry,’ I say. ‘Think of me, sifting through shit,’ I add.

  ‘It’s an image I shall treasure,’ says Andy.

  ‘Good.’ I laugh. ‘Oh, will you check on Mrs Fletcher for me?’

  ‘Done,’ says Andy. ‘Janet seemed to be doing fine. The daughter’s yet to show.’

  ‘OK, keep me up to date.’

  ‘Will do, over and out.’

  ‘Speak later.’

  Just before my gate I spot a handy emergency staircase and slip off for a cigarette. It’s been quite a morning and I need to gird myself before I get the gloves on and go passport fishing. At the bottom of the stairwell I find a Styrofoam cup packed to the brim with cold coffee and slowly biodegrading butts; plenty of people have clearly had this idea before me. I stand outside by the door and watch the ramp rats going about their business, unloading the baggage cartons, sorting out cargo, hooking the plane up to the electricity in the terminal, and attaching a tug cart to trawl it around the airport.

  They are a real mixture of people. Some of them are full time, like the ex-dockers who took up jobs just as the ports were in decline and the airports were on the rise. The others are part-time plumbers and builders who need to put something down on their tax forms before accepting all those cash-in-hand jobs. Those are the guys who tend to call in sick when the World Cup is on; they are struck down with some terrible disease every time England play. They are similarly afflicted during major rugby games and on festive dates such as New Year’s Day. They get paid when they call in sick – you only need a doctor’s certificate after seven days – so what do they care?

  A bloke in a bright yellow protective suit drives past on the honey wagon. His job is to empty the plane toilets. He attaches a hose to the side of the aircraft and pumps out the contents. It’s not the most pleasant of jobs, and I swear to God the bloke who does it has smelt of shit every time I’ve stood behind him in the canteen.

  Despite the conditions on the ramp, the noise, the rain, the cold, and the gales of freezing air every time a plane screams past, the atmosphere is jokey and packed with blokeish banter. There are some legendary nicknames that circulate. There’s Kitkat, the bloke with only four fingers – he lost one while attaching a luggage trolley to a tug and was well compensated for his loss. There’s also the Burglar, a bloke whose nose is so flat he looks like he is wearing a stocking.

  But it is also a dangerous place. Accidents, such as Kitkat’s finger, are more frequent than you’d think. The worst ramp story I ever heard was when a baggage handler got locked into the hold of a plane. It can happen quite easily if you are loading at the back of the plane and someone closes the hold door. Anyway, the plane was about to take off when a colleague realized he was missing. They ran across and stopped the plane on the runway. When they managed to get the hold door open, the baggage handler hurled himself out of the plane onto the tarmac, shattering his ankle, and ran and ran. Eventually they found him near the perimeter fence and he was a gibbering wreck. He had only been in there for half an hour but it had been long enough to send him crazy. Being locked in the hold is the baggage handler’s equivalent of Room 101. It is pitch black in there and, when in the air, the temperature gets as low as minus forty. Apparently all the baggage handler could say was, ‘It was cold, it was cold.’ He had also undone some of the suitcases in there and had wrapped himself in clothes. Needless to say, he never worked again.

  ‘All right?’ I nod at one of the ramp guys as he walks past. I think I recognize him. He’s called Kevin or Ken, or something like that.

  ‘All right,’ he sniffs back.

  ‘Having a good day?’ I ask in the special bloke voice I usually reserve for London c
abbies or the ramp.

  ‘What?’ he says, turning to look at me. He’s not the bloke I thought he was at all.

  ‘Um, having a good day?’ I ask again, rapidly losing confidence in my question.

  ‘All right,’ he sniffs again, and walks off, putting on his earphones, terminating our witty banter.

  I take one last drag on my cigarette. The nicotine rush is making me feel a bit better. If only I could combine it with a cup of coffee, the alchemy would be complete. I throw the butt to the floor and stamp on it with my shoe.

  ‘Excuse me,’ comes this rather well-spoken female voice. I look up. Standing in front of me in a bright yellow coat over what looks like a navy puffer jacket is a woman d’un certain âge, or possibly older. She is wearing a calf-length navy skirt and flat, sensible shoes. ‘Can I have a look at your pass, please?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, rather taken aback.

  ‘Can I look at your pass?’ she repeats.

  ‘Um, sorry, who are you?’

  ‘I’m one of the plane guards,’ she replies, sounding put out.

  ‘Oh!’ I say. ‘I’m terribly sorry.’ I hand over the pass that was swinging around my neck. ‘I’m just on my way to that plane.’ I point over her shoulder. ‘Looking for a passport, or a bit of one.’

  This is one of the few times I’ve come across the new plane guards. A post-9/11 precaution, they are usually deployed in twos – one to stand at the entrance to the plane checking who comes in and out while the other circles on the ramp. They tend to swap over when the circling one gets too chilly. Anyone who thinks these new guards are CIA lookalikes with earpieces and guns will be sorely disappointed, as most of them are retired pillars of the community or housewives earning pin money. This one could be either. Their training, or so Andy says, runs along the lines of a two-day course during which they are shown the plane and the ramp and told not to get run over. I’m sure they’d scare the shit out of any al-Qaeda operative.

  ‘Right,’ she says, squinting slightly as she takes a closer look at my card. I want to hold it up to the light so that she can see it more easily. ‘That all looks OK to me.’

  ‘Thanks.’ I smile. ‘Seen anyone dangerous today?’

  ‘Not so far,’ she replies as she walks away. Humour is clearly not part of the job description.

  I walk back up the stairs and along the corridor towards the gate. I am just in time to see Mr Fletcher coming off the aircraft on top of the drinks trolley surrounded by Terry, Derek, the coroner and a couple of blokes in smart dark suits who I presume to be the undertakers. They have covered the corpse in a blanket but it is still a deeply undignified exit. I’m glad Mrs Fletcher is at the other end of the terminal. Terry catches my eye and gives me a wink.

  ‘Only the best for your airline,’ he grins. ‘No expense spared.’

  They transfer the body into a black bag and on to another more dignified trolley not usually reserved for drinks and snacks. They then wheel it off in the direction of the ramp and a waiting van. This comes as something of a relief as it’s perhaps not the best advert for our airline to have the corpse wheeled through the terminal.

  I watch Mr Fletcher’s body turn the corner before boarding the plane. Poor bloke, I think, I bet he never thought it would end this way.

  Onboard the place is a hive of activity. There are about six or seven cleaners scouring up and down the plane. Sporting industrial-strength pink rubber gloves, they are spraying and polishing away like they mean it. Unlike the cleaners in the airport who are mainly from Africa or the Eastern bloc, plane cleaners are all from the Indian subcontinent. The job is contracted out and each of the terminals has its own clique or group. Some say that they divided up by religions, Terminal 1 being Sikh and 4 being Hindu. Our terminal is mixed, but the guys who do our planes are mainly from northwest India, mainly Sikh, and mainly called Singh. In the good old days this used to work to their advantage. Paid around £250 a week, they used to split the job between a few of them so that any day of the week there was always someone who turned up, and they were always called Singh. They might look nothing like the guy on the pass, but no-one seemed to mind very much. These days, however, it is different. The rules have really tightened up. Only the real Mr Singh gets through. But sometimes I wonder, who is kidding whom?

  I pick up a spare pair of pink rubber gloves from the cleaning trolley parked in club class. They go very well with the blue suit. Walking back into economy, I start picking my way through the rubbish on the floor. It’s back-breaking work. Searching through biscuit crumbs, odd socks, glasses cases and curled-up newspapers is not my idea of fun.

  But someone’s got to do it, I suppose. Civil Aviation Authority regulations dictate that all planes have to be searched when they touch down, following some case in the eighties when a bomb was left on a plane after two passengers disembarked. But then again, plane searches don’t always seem to happen. The other day a mate of mine found Shirley Bassey’s passport, two days after she had flown. The plane had been to the States and back twice, and still no-one had spotted it. Quite how she made it through passport control without it is anyone’s guess.

  ‘Has anyone seen a passport? Or any bits of a passport?’ I ask, standing in the aisle. Only two of the cleaners bother to look up and acknowledge my question. ‘No? Anything?’

  ‘No,’ says one of them, a large smile on his face.

  I’m not sure whether to believe him or not. There are a certain number of perks that go along with the cleaning job – a sort of finders-keepers unwritten rule. Although an airline will always insist that you’ll be able to get your wallet back if you leave it on a plane, it isn’t always the case. The same goes for any alcohol that’s left unlocked, or bar that is left unbonded, or unsecured. But perhaps a passport is pushing it a bit. After all, how much is an Indonesian passport worth on the black market?

  I make my way to the toilets. I don’t know why I didn’t go for them straight away – they are the most likely place. There is piss and toilet paper all over each of the floors. The stench is quite overpowering. I go through the bins underneath the basin, hoping that our illegal might have dumped the documents in there. The contents are quite unpleasant. I hold my breath so as not to have to inhale too much. Used sanitary towels, filthy tissues, a diabetic’s syringe, the packaging for some anal pessaries – it is all in there. But no passport.

  I don’t know what to do. I’m not about to go through the contents of the actual toilet; Immigration can do that if they really want to. I’ve got another flight to deal with. The 0810 is about to land from Sydney via Bangkok and I have to be gateside for that.

  Andy calls me on the radio. He sounds hassled.

  ‘Where are you?’ he asks.

  ‘Elbow deep in shit.’

  ‘Get your arse over to gate 54A. The flight’s come in early.’

  I peel off my pink gloves and sprint down the plane. If I hurry, I can go via passport control, inform the officer about the passport or lack of it, and still make it for the Bangkok flight. I need to be there on time. There is always no end of problems coming off that flight.

  8–9 AM

  BY THE TIME I arrive at gate 54A, via passport control, I am pink, puffed and have run so hard that I can feel the sweat snaking its way down my sides. This is turning out to be quite an exhausting morning. It’s amazing how one corpse and an illegal can put the rest of your day totally out of whack. So far I’ve only managed one cigarette and a whiff of coffee each time I’ve sprinted past Costa’s, and I’m really beginning to feel it. My stomach is rumbling. What the hell am I doing? I’m pouring sweat, my stomach is doing somersaults, and to be honest, my suit is looking a bit worse for wear. I’m hardly a good look for the airline at the moment. The glamorous face of the service industry. Exactly what the customers want to see when they disembark the plane.

  There are a couple of ramp rats standing by the gate, but Andy’s not here. They tell me he’s off sourcing wheelchairs – the bane of our lives. Not on
ly is there always a shortage of the things, but the people who request them often don’t need them at all. I’ve lost count of the number of times I have wheeled someone through the airport, taken them through customs and passport control, and got a porter to pick up their bags, only for them to get out of the wheelchair in arrivals and sprint towards their waiting relatives. It is one of the oldest scams in the book. If you’re in a wheelchair you get taken to the front of every queue and get given the same treatment as a visiting VIP. So you can understand its appeal. If you don’t fancy waiting around it is the quickest way through the airport. It drives one of my flight attendant mates, Lynne, so crazy that as soon as the passenger gets out of the chair she shouts, ‘Ladies and gentlemen! I give you another miracle courtesy of the airline industry! After decades in a chair, he walks again! Look how good he is on his feet! Look how fast he is!’ They are normally so embarrassed by her outburst that they end up sprinting off as quickly as possible. Some passengers have no shame at all and use the wheelchair for their hand luggage when they get off the plane. It is extraordinary. Sometimes, and I don’t say this very often, I think Ryanair had the right idea when it charged their passengers for use of wheelchairs. Perhaps it would sort those in real need from the fakes.

  Andy finally arrives with three chairs. Two have Derek and Terry at the helm.

  ‘Back again?’ I say to Terry, who is looking even redder-faced than before.

  ‘Yup.’ He smiles. ‘Seen your stiff off.’

  ‘Good. Any problems?’

  ‘No,’ says Derek. ‘The daughter turned up from Hammersmith and they all seemed to be OK when we left.’

  ‘That’s good.’

  ‘We left them dealing with the paperwork,’ Derek continues.

  ‘Yuk.’ Andy shivers, his skin looking grey despite his electric tan.

  ‘What?’ I say.

  ‘Paperwork,’ he says. ‘Can’t abide the stuff.’

  ‘What are you expecting off here?’ I ask Terry.

  ‘Not sure. Just so long as it’s not some old bird covered in shit like we had the other week.’