Air Babylon

by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  ‘No time for that, I’m afraid, Debbie,’ I say, trying to bristle with efficiency. ‘We’ve got two flights to get out back to back, so the quicker you get this one off the less of a nightmare the next one’s going to be.’

  ‘Oh,’ she says, batting her eyelashes. ‘Just a little sip. I need the caffeine to get me through. Go on.’ She gives my arm a little tap.

  Sometimes I really do wish I was gay. Her desperate display to butter me up and flirt with me is so goddamn poor, it’s pathetic she thinks I’d even go for it.

  ‘Come on,’ I say, quite sharply. ‘All the others are out there. And we’ve got a Lagos queue next door. We need to be cracking on.’

  ‘Fair enough,’ she sighs, putting down her mug. ‘Seeing as it’s you . . .’

  If she’d said ‘seeing as it’s a Lagos queue’ I might be more impressed. The queues for the Lagos flights are notorious. For not only are they long and packed, not only do they seep into surrounding queues – hence my desire to have all hands on deck and all eyes to the front – they are also always the most difficult to board. Mainly due to the huge amounts of luggage everyone always seems to take with them. I know it’s a cliché to say that on some flights they take everything including the kitchen sink. Well, on the Lagos flights I have actually seen a great big aluminium kitchen sink, not to mention a sofa, a desk, armchairs, a couple of car tyres, a bicycle, a Breville sandwich maker, and sacks and sacks of rice. All of which we are supposed to be able to let fly under the 30kg weight restriction or indeed the 32kg BAA restriction. The boys downstairs won’t carry anything heavier. It’s more than their lower backs are worth.

  My favourite, however, was a rather large lady who turned up in traditional dress wheeling a huge mahogany coffin. Fortunately it was empty (we checked); still, the thing weighed a ton. We did try to persuade her to leave it behind, or send it as cargo, but she was insistent on bringing it back because it was so beautiful and such a bargain. Eventually we charged her through the nose for it and shoved it at the back of the hold. I never found out who it was for. Had she picked it out for herself, or had she had plans for a certain unsuspecting relative?

  Even though the Nigerian flights are a nightmare to board, that’s not to say they are unpopular to work. They’re not. They can be highly lucrative, particularly if you are not the most scrupulous member of the check-in staff. A lot of the bags are stuffed with wares bound for the markets of Lagos, so in order to make the weight requirement, or cut down on excess charges, bundles of cash regularly cross the counter tucked inside passports or, less subtly, brown envelopes. The temptation to pocket the money and look the other way when it comes to weighing in another tractor tyre is extreme.

  Sadly – or is it perhaps fortunately? – we no longer do flights to Lagos. Ever since terrorists pointed surface-to-air missiles at planes coming out of Kenya’s Mombasa airport we’ve dropped all our Africa flights. Except for Nigeria, none of the others was making us much money anyway. There weren’t enough business passengers and too many holidaymakers on air miles. We all knew the missile thing was a timely excuse really. It just meant that we cut down on the sort of flights, like South Africa and Tanzania, that I used to enjoy taking at 10 per cent of the cost.

  No such problems with this Singapore flight. It is usually so full of businessmen that we regularly overbook by 20 per cent. Again, you’d be amazed at the number of no-shows we get. Meetings change at the last minute, and quite a few of them cut it fine in the late-afternoon traffic after trying to fit in one last telephone call before getting into the cab. Why should the airline be left out of pocket?

  I am standing at the end of the row of desks. All the girls seem to be checking in nicely. The break seems to have done their humour some good, and it appears that Chanel and Cathy have got over their brief spat earlier because they keep sharing tight smiles about various handsome-ish or rich-looking business passengers. After one of our check-in girls managed to pull and marry an American millionaire businessman last year, they all live in hope. After all, there are plenty more Adnan Khashoggi types out there to make them think it’s still possible.

  The queues don’t seem to be moving too slowly at the moment. Everyone has apparently packed their own bags and no-one’s got nail scissors in their hand luggage. Towards the back of Trisha’s queue I notice a guy in a large lobster-shaped hat. I have no idea what he thinks he looks like, but there’s something about him, other than the hat, that requires closer inspection. I walk up to the back of the queue.

  ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ I say.

  ‘Hello there.’ Turns out the man is American, and he looks to be in his fifties – a little old, perhaps, to be wearing such a hat.

  ‘Those your bags there, sir?’ I ask.

  ‘Sure are,’ he replies.

  ‘Did you pack them yourself?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Good, because sometimes people are given things to carry on board that later turn out to be a bomb. Can you vouch for all the stuff you have with you, sir?’

  The bloke’s face falls a bit; his cheeks turn a pale shade of pink as he looks directly at the carrier bag he is holding.

  ‘Well, urn, I suppose this video camera is new.’

  ‘Right.’ I smile. ‘New, sir? Where did you get it?’

  ‘Rome,’ he says. ‘It was given to me by my cousin.’

  ‘Oh, so you have family in Rome?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh. But you just said that your cousin gave it to you in Rome.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right . . . I bought it.’

  ‘You bought it? But you just said that your cousin gave it to you.’

  ‘Yes I know, but—’

  ‘Do you have a cousin in Rome, sir?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Right. Were you given the video camera in Rome?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No. Right. Have you been to Rome?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Yes, you have, good.’ I smile again. ‘Finally we are getting somewhere.’

  ‘Today,’ he adds, triumphantly.

  ‘Today indeed. And you were given the video camera today? In Rome?’

  ‘No,’ he says. ‘I bought it.’

  ‘You bought it,’ I repeat. ‘OK . . . duty free?’

  ‘No, from a man in the departure lounge.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I think they were stolen,’ he admits. ‘But he said I could have one for a hundred dollars.’

  ‘OK,’ I say, standing back and looking at the carrier. ‘I’m afraid I’m going to have to call the police.’

  ‘I’m not in trouble?’ asks the man, panic rising in his voice.

  ‘Well, you have lied to me and trafficked in stolen goods, but other than that you’re fine.’

  ‘There are two of them in there,’ he says finally.

  ‘Two what?’

  ‘Video cameras.’ He smiles. ‘Well, they were only a hundred each.’

  I call the police on my radio and they arrive in no time at all. They confiscate the bag and disappear, leaving two men behind in charge of the American. Although it is highly unlikely that Lobsterman’s bag is carrying anything other than video cameras, we can’t be too careful. A few minutes later the police return, looking perplexed to say the least.

  ‘We’ve X-rayed the bag,’ one of them tells me, ‘and, urn, we’ve found nothing that indicates there is anything electrical in there.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say.

  Lobsterman looks troubled. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘There are no video cameras in the boxes?’ I suggest.

  ‘But I bought two of them,’ he declares.

  ‘I know.’

  ‘We’re going to get two of our boys to open the bag,’ says the police officer.

  ‘OK,’ I say.

  Having ascertained that there is nothing electrical in the bag, therefore ruling out a bomb, they decide to open it up in front of the American. But they are still careful and a little g
inger about it. Sliding the box slowly out of the bag, they gently lift the lid. Everyone stands back. One officer takes out the wrapped contents and peels off the cellophane. He places the object on the floor in front of everyone. I lean over. It’s not what anyone was expecting at all. Turns out that Lobsterman’s hundred-dollar video cameras are in fact black painted wooden boxes with photocopies of a video camera stuck on the front of them. Inside, to give them the necessary weight, the boxes have been filled with sand. The policeman steps back and raises his eyebrows. It looks like he’s biting the inside of his cheek, trying not to laugh. I needed an explanation as to why a fifty-year-old man would be seen dead in a lobster hat, and now I have it.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I say as I watch his puzzled expression. ‘Often when things are too good to be true, they are too good to be true.’

  ‘But that’s not what he showed me,’ he replies.

  ‘Better luck in Singapore.’ I smile and show him towards the queue. ‘You get plenty of bargain electrical goods over there. Just pay a bit more attention next time.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ he says. ‘I’m never going to be caught like that again.’

  He says that, but there have been plenty who have. Only last week I had some bloke in the queue who had a bag of onions inside a box that he thought was a computer. But I have to say that black boxes of sand are not really my target when going up and down a queue, although supposed gifts are the first things I’m looking for when I’m security-checking a flight. After all, it was a teddy bear full of explosives that Anna-Marie Murphy unwittingly tried to take on to an El Al flight in 1986. But there are certain things you check for and certain things that automatically mean you pull the passenger. A lot of them are quite simple: you check to see if the names and baggage tags match, that they are carrying their own bags; you look for Middle Eastern stamps in passports, or anomalies such as a Lebanese baggage tag coupled with a passenger who is a US passport holder, with an Israeli stamp in their passport, as you are not allowed into the Lebanon with Israeli stamps. But I have to say that, bombs aside, most of our problems centre on entering rather than leaving the UK.

  One of the more amusing aspects of the security check is watching the reaction of people further back in the queue. There is always some bloke who suddenly remembers he’s got some dope, a wrap of coke, or a couple of Es still on him and who disappears off to the toilets, either to finish off his own supply or to flush it down the loo. The cleaners are always discovering discarded wraps in the landside toilets. And it’s not just the toilets. Rubbish bins and fast-food boxes are also favoured places for dumping drugs. Just the other day a large fistful of grass wrapped in clingfilm was discovered underneath a whole pile of Crunchies in WHSmith. Some pothead must have panicked and shoved it there for safekeeping.

  The thing that gets me is that they all think they have been so subtle about it when they return to the queue. But there is no greater coke-snorting giveaway than some twitchy bloke with a stinking cold who won’t stop trying to chat up the check-in girl, or telling her fascinating facts about himself. If we suspect that you have more on you than what you have put up your nose, we’ll stop you, call customs and have you searched. Shoes, hats, underpants, bras, up the backside – they’ll take their time and they usually find what they are looking for. Two days ago a girl came through with what seemed like terrible flu. Her bags were X-rayed and her talc bottle was filled with what came up as ‘organic material’. She was pulled just before she boarded the plane and was just a bit too jumpy and a bit too quick with her answers for anyone’s liking. Turned out in the end that her talc bottle contained ten grams of coke, which she claimed was for personal use. Judging by her unfortunate streaming cold, I was inclined to believe her. Not that it would have made much of a difference. She was in big trouble whichever way you look at it.

  It’s always a difficult call pulling people you suspect are using or carrying drugs if it’s only for their personal use. I remember when a mate of mine who was working for another airline had this problem with the lead singer of a well-known British band. The airline had sent a limo to collect him from his west London home and it was clear that the bloke had been up all night. He kept the limo waiting for over an hour while one girl after another left the flat, and when he finally got into the car he made the driver go via Earls Court where he met a dealer in the street, money changed hands, and he picked up more of what he was taking. The driver then drove him to the express check-in and went and informed my mate. By the time my mate arrived to speak to the popstar in question it was clear that he had taken most of what he had just bought. He was bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and very talkative.

  ‘I mean, what was I to do?’ asked my mate. ‘Pull him for having a system full of class A drugs? Then we would have to start checking everyone, even the more subtle user. I mean, if he wants to fly to New York ripped to the tits on coke, that’s his business. Personally it is my idea of hell, having to sit down while full of fidgety energy. But each to their own.’

  So they let him fly. They warned the flight attendants to watch him and make sure he didn’t misbehave. Apparently he went and did a few more lines on the plane, but nothing they couldn’t handle. In fact, if you are going to abuse drugs, they’d prefer it on board that you took class A rather than B/C, or whatever marijuana is supposed to be these days. Smoking in the loos is against Civil Aviation Authority rules and is punishable by a huge fine or imprisonment, depending on the airline; chopping out a line is not, even though, just as alcohol in the air is different from a drink on the ground (one in the air equals three on the ground), so coke at altitude can make you a little more odd, crazy and violent. We had one wired guy once try to kick the door open mid-flight. He then turned around and fractured the flight attendant’s jaw as she tried to wrestle him to the ground. He was arrested as soon as the plane touched down.

  It’s more often than not a case of trying to work out which is the lesser of two evils. When another flight attendant I know confiscated all the marijuana from a rowdy American heavy metal band after they all lit up a joint in first class, she knew they just went straight to the toilets to take coke. But then, as she put it, ‘What am I supposed to do? Famous people don’t seem to be able to fly straight.’

  The Nigeria flight next door now seems to have some sort of hold-up. There is what looks like a family of eight all wanting to travel first class, and wads of cash are being slapped down on the counter. I smile. Happy days, I think, as I watch the check-in girl break into a sweat. I look back across to my own check-in and at the front of Trisha’s queue there seems to be something going on. Trisha is looking insistent and a middle-aged woman is appearing defiant.

  ‘I am sorry, madam,’ I can hear Trisha saying, ‘but the photograph looks nothing like you.’

  ‘But it is me,’ the woman insists. ‘Look, what else can I show you to prove that it’s me? Here’ – she empties her wallet – ‘look. Credit cards, all with my name on them. Look. Parkes . . . Parkes . . . Camilla Parkes.’ She snaps one card after the other down on the counter. ‘They are all mine. See? The same name is on the passport. The same name is on the ticket.’

  ‘I’m afraid that credit cards are not considered a form of ID,’ says Trisha. Her white, square-tipped nails type some message over to Debbie on the next-door check-in. Debbie promptly bursts out laughing. ‘Anyway,’ says Trisha, a conspiratorial smirk on her lips, ‘you could have stolen them.’

  ‘Oh Jesus Christ!’ says Ms Parkes. ‘Now you’re accusing me of being a thief!’

  ‘Can I help?’ I ask.

  ‘I don’t know,’ replies Ms Parkes. ‘Can you?’

  ‘What seems to be the problem?’

  ‘The problem is that this woman here is claiming that I have stolen my own credit cards along with my own passport.’

  ‘And all these are legitimately yours?’ I ask.

  ‘Of course they are,’ she replies, with heavy sarcasm.

  ‘May I?’

  She hand
s over her passport with a hefty sigh which wafts mildly acrid old champagne breath in my direction. I open up the back page and take a look at her photo. Shit! Trisha is right. The old woman in the shot looks nothing like the forty-something honey standing in front of me. The date of birth of the woman in the passport makes her fifty-six; Ms Parkes must at most be in her mid forties. Yet they do look similar.

  ‘Um,’ I say. ‘Are you sure you haven’t picked up your sister’s passport, or your aunt’s, by mistake?’ I suggest.

  ‘Oh for God’s sake,’ shouts Ms Parkes. ‘I’ve had a bloody facelift! Look – here, here, and here.’ She frantically yanks back her blonde hair and pulls forward her ears to reveal the thinnest of scarlet scars. ‘See?’ she says, snatching back her passport. Her face is red with fury and the indignity of it all. ‘It is supposed to be a subtle job,’ she mutters, putting her passport back inside her handbag.

  ‘It is,’ I reassure her.

  ‘Yeah, right,’ she replies. ‘I’m unrecognizable.’

  ‘No, it’s just a bad photo in the passport,’ I try, weakly. ‘They always are—’

  ‘No, it’s too tight,’ she says. ‘I told the surgeon it was too tight. Do you think it’s too tight?’

  I’d like to stand around and discuss the merits of Ms Parkes’ extreme make-over – which is, for the record, far too tight – but I notice that Debbie is now having a few problems of her own. I inform Ms Parkes that hers is the best job I have ever seen and make my way over.

  ‘Everything all right here?’ I ask.

  ‘Well,’ replies Debbie, keeping her tone high and cleverly light (she’s no fool), ‘I think sir here has had a bit too much to drink.’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ slurs a middle-aged bloke in a pin-stripe suit. He is looking at me, but it’s clear from the way his bloodshot gaze meanders that he can’t quite determine which of the two or possibly three of me to look at.

  ‘He’s only had a couple,’ says his mate, unwisely slapping him on the back, propelling the drunk a few fumbling steps forward.