I pick up my passport, my boarding card and my small rucksack and make my way through security. I am still wearing my airside pass so they wave me through. As I wander through duty free on my way to the lounge, I radio Andy to check that he is not boarding yet.
‘We’ve got a half-hour fog delay,’ he replies.
‘We have?’
‘Yup,’ he confirms. ‘The plane was late out of Abu Dhabi.’
‘OK,’ I say, standing at the Clinique counter wondering whether I should buy some scrub and cream for his birthday or wait until I get back and get him something more personal. I buy him a pot of his favourite turnaround cream just so that he has something to open.
‘The captain also says there’s a landing light problem.’
‘Oh?’
‘Yeah. He’s just trying to work out if we can fly with it.’
‘You’re not allowed to fly without a landing light,’ I point out.
‘I know that, you know that, Richard the captain knows that, but is he going to risk delaying three hundred passengers and thousands of quid in profit for the sake of a landing light? I don’t think so.’
‘Yeah,’ I agree. ‘Particularly if we have a daylight landing in Dubai.’
Pilots fly with legal faults every day, from small things such as broken toilets and dodgy seats to seemingly rather important pieces of equipment such as a broken ‘yaw damper’, which stops the plane from oscillating and prevents the passengers from feeling sick, or even a thrust reversal engine brake that’s not working. Then there are faults, such as a broken landing light, that you are absolutely not allowed to fly with. There is a minimum equipment list, or Defects Book – a manual to which the captain refers when he has a problem. In it is everything that has to be functioning properly in order to fly legally. If your fault is not on the list then you have no excuse not to fly, indeed the airline will sack you if you don’t. It costs them far too much money to have you hanging around on the ground.
But this is a self-policing industry, the Civil Aviation Authority is funded by the airlines themselves, and all fault reporting is down to the staff. Although their safety record is excellent, the pressure some of the CAA inspectors are under to pass planes as fit to fly must be immense. When it comes to maintenance and checks, I’ve heard extraordinary stories of some aircraft that haven’t been serviced for a year or more and are still flying. They have done over a hundred thousand flying miles without so much as someone checking that the cargo door still locks. A couple of years back, one very well-known airline used regularly to lose the logbooks for their parts (each aeroplane part has a birth-to-death logbook in which everything that ever happens to it is written down). When it came to inspections, they would miraculously find them. Either they had somewhat amazingly been found down the back of the filing cabinet, or they had been made up overnight. Either explanation is, of course, not remotely satisfactory.
Along with paperwork problems, there are also stories of engineers who don’t know their backsides from their airsides. I know of an airline in another UK airport that used car mechanics to check over their planes instead of properly trained aeroplane engineers. There’s also a debate raging at the moment about whether the visual checks planes get while sitting on the ramp are actually enough or should other, more technical tests be used. When an Airbus A310 recently lost its twenty-eight-foot-long rudder over the Caribbean, there were those who said there was no way anyone could have been able to check the viability or deterioration of such an important part of the plane through sight alone. And as the November 2001 disaster, when 265 people died after American Airlines flight 587 crashed shortly after take-off from JFK, proves, sudden rudder loss can be fatal.
All I know is that the smallest thing can bring down a plane – a locked landing gear, a frozen windspeed pipe or, in the case of the Air France Concorde that crashed over Paris in 2000, an exploding tyre. I remember the story of a plane crashing into the Potomac River in the US after the crew did not activate the anti-ice system. The instruments froze and the pilot couldn’t read them properly. He thought he had reached maximum engine thrust when he was nowhere near it, and he failed to clear the 14th Street Bridge that crossed the river. The plane went through the ice and all but six people died.
Then again, as they say, shit happens. You buy your ticket and you take your chance. I know Richard will choose to fly tonight, faulty landing light or not. We will therefore be what is known as ‘illegal to crash’, or, more specifically, uninsured. But if he lands safely in Dubai, who’s to know? The airline is more likely to bollock him for not flying tonight than the other way round.
I arrive at the gate and find Andy, who reports that, sure enough, Richard has chosen to fly. He doesn’t need the light to land in Dubai so he’s not grounding the flight. However, should we need to make an emergency landing just outside the UK due to a heart attack or the rapid onset of childbirth, then he will, indeed, be fucked. But Andy’s too excited about his birthday to care about that and I am far too tired to bother much either. I just want to get on this flight and get the whole thing over with.
The fog delay isn’t helping matters either. We’ve got passengers at the gate who are bored and want to board. We’ve got passengers drinking in the terminal. We’ve got passengers still in the lounges. The whole thing is chaos. I like a nice neat board, and this is clearly not going to be one of those. And to top it all we have a club class problem. I explain my suspicions to Andy.
‘I think Dave’s been taking cash for upgrades, or something like that is going on.’
‘Are you sure?’ asks Andy.
‘Well, I know we get a lot of frequent flyer card holders on this flight, but there’s something about this that smells a bit dodgy. Club is too full for this time of year. And Dave was far too keen to push off at the end of his shift. Let’s just keep an eye on things.’
‘I’ll have a word with Cathy.’
‘Can you check that bloke coming in now?’ I say, pointing to a short, slim guy in a well-cut suit.
‘OK,’ says Andy, and he starts to walk towards the check-in. He stops suddenly in his tracks and turns to look at me, a pleading look on his face.
‘What?’
‘Do I have to?’ he mouths.
‘Yes.’
‘Excuse me, sir,’ I hear him say as I approach from behind.
‘Oh, hello,’ says the short guy, with a wide smile. ‘How are you?’
‘Fine,’ says Andy. ‘I’m sorry to have to do this, sir, but could I check your ticket and your boarding card?’
‘Of course,’ says the short man, handing them both over. ‘But how are you?’
‘Fine,’ mumbles Andy again, staring at the ticket. The tips of his ears are growing red. I move in closer. ‘I’m afraid this upgrade is illegal,’ he says.
‘Oh?’ says the short man.
‘Yes, sir, I’m sorry, it’s definitely illegal.’
‘Will you stop calling me sir,’ mutters the man. ‘We’ve had sex.’
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ continues Andy without missing a beat, ‘but we do have a problem.’
‘I was offered an upgrade for two hundred in cash at check-in,’ he says.
‘Do you have a receipt for that, sir?’
‘Was the sex that bad?’
‘Sorry?’
‘Was I that disappointing?’
‘No, it’s just that you have an illegal upgrade and I can’t allow you to fly in club.’ Andy gets out his pen and taps into the computer. ‘So I am downgrading you to, urn, thirty-six B on the bulkhead. You’ll have plenty of leg room.’
‘Fine,’ says the man, snatching back his boarding card. ‘Just get me my money back.’
‘Give me your name and address and I’ll sort something out,’ says Andy.
‘You know my name,’ hisses the man.
‘Of course I do,’ lies Andy.
‘Here’s my card,’ he says, after rootling around in his top pocket. ‘And don’t call me.’
>
‘No.’ Andy smiles.
‘Because quite frankly you weren’t much cop yerself,’ the man says, marching off to sit down at the other end of the lounge.
‘Oh dear,’ I whisper into Andy’s ear. ‘Who was that?’
‘Oh God,’ says Andy, shaking his head. ‘The marketing director of some make-up brand. I met him at a party a couple of weeks ago.’
‘Right.’
‘I told you I didn’t want to deal with him.’
‘Now I can see why.’ I smile. ‘Why don’t you check out that married couple over there. No danger of intimate knowledge with them.’
‘You never know,’ smiles Andy. ‘It’s always the so-called straight ones who are the most deviant.’
Finally I get to call the flight for boarding and we spend the next fifteen minutes checking all the boarding passes against all the tickets, looking for more of Dave’s victims. All in all we find five people who have been illegally upgraded. One of them even has NSUG (Not Suitable for Up Grade) typed by his name, which means he must have been rude to one of the girls before he was even approached by Dave. I have to say that Andy and I are both gobsmacked by Dave’s brass neck. I mean, I’ve heard of people taking bribes for upgrades – that goes on all the time – but I have never heard of someone actually flogging them at check-in. I should go and report him myself right away, but I’ve got a plane to catch. I put my own boarding card through the ticket machine and walk towards the plane. Part of me actually rather admires Dave. He managed to pocket a grand in an afternoon. That’s quite something. He will keep until I get back. Hangover or no hangover, that’s the first thing I’ll sort out when I touch down.
‘Get a move on,’ says Andy, pushing me along the finger towards the plane. ‘Sue and Rachel are waiting to get the drinks.’
‘All right, all right,’ I say. ‘Anyway, what’s the hurry? There’s still quite a few people ahead of us.’
8–9 PM
‘FUCK YOU, MADAM. Fuck you. Thank you, sir . . . this queue. Fuck you, sir? That’s right. Fuck you. Fuck you. Fuck you? Both of you . . .’
I can hear Craig from the back of the line as I wait to board the plane. Andy turns around and smirks.
‘Can you hear him?’ he asks.
‘Yes,’ I say, rolling my eyes.
This is one of the oldest tricks in the book, telling passengers to fuck off in the politest and most pleasant of voices while at the same time pretending to say ‘far queue’. Craig does it every time he boards a plane and still somehow it manages to amuse him – and now, seemingly, Andy, who is quietly corpsing in front of me. I’ve heard it so many times before I’m afraid that it no longer tickles me. It ranks up there with farting in passenger’s faces, which is another flight attendant favourite.
If you know they’re at it, then face-farting is actually quite easy to spot. It’s usually directed towards someone who has pissed off a check-in girl, or who has been difficult and unpleasant during food service. The flight attendant will travel down the aisle and pause to talk to someone else, bending right down, forcing their buttocks into the face of the annoying passenger. And then they will break wind. Cabin pressure makes everyone far more flatulent than when on the ground because the stomach bloats, so it’s much easier to fart to order in the air. There are some attendants who pride themselves on this extremely useful skill. Craig, needless to say, is one of them.
‘Fuck you, Andy,’ says Craig, taking a look at his ticket. ‘Fuck you, sir,’ he says, smiling at me. ‘Are you two the last?’
‘Yes,’ I say. ‘As far as I know.’
‘Fuck you both,’ he says at the top of his voice as he ushers us along. ‘This is going to be a great flight.’ He pauses and leans forward to whisper into Andy’s ear. ‘Only problem is,’ he grins, ‘I’ve already had three of the hosties on this flight.’
‘Really?’ says Andy, turning around.
‘Yup. My only hope is that they haven’t “shared” too much in the galley.’ His fingers do the quotation-marks-in-the-air thing.
‘Let’s hope so,’ agrees Andy.
‘Looks like one of our bets might yet come to fruition,’ I say.
‘What’s that?’ asks Craig.
‘Just a little something I’ve got going with Andy,’ I say. ‘That one day you’ll have a whole plane of ex-shags to deal with.’
‘Oh, right.’ Craig smiles, enjoying the idea. ‘Sadly it’s just half of economy on this flight.’
‘Keep at it,’ I say, slapping him on the back as we turn left inside the plane.
‘Now that’s what I call an ambition,’ he says.
‘All right in there?’ says Andy.
He is a few steps ahead of me and has paused by the galley curtain. He is giving someone the thumbs-up. I walk past and poke my head in to see who he is talking to. Sitting on a metal case, his face in an oxygen mask, is a handsome young bloke with straight blond hair and a straight long nose, who I presume to be Tom Raven. He takes another hit from the bottle, closing his eyes as he inhales, and gives me a thumbs-up.
‘All right?’ he says as he finally pulls the mask away.
‘All right?’
‘Thank God for this stuff,’ he says, pointing to the oxygen bottle. ‘I’ve got a fucking killer of a hangover.’
Oxygen steeling is a common hangover cure, especially on the early-morning flights. A couple of shots up the nose are usually enough to put any hostie who has spent a heavy night out on the tiles on the road to recovery. But it is rare for anyone to be using it this late in the day.
‘Tom’s clearly had a late one,’ I say, sitting down next to Andy and fastening my seat belt.
‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘I left him at about four a.m. this morning. I imagine he hasn’t slept much either.’
Andy and I are sitting in two blue leather chairs in the middle of the front row of club class. To our right are Sue and Rachel, and to our left, sitting on his own, is some old bald bloke with an unfeasibly large stomach who appears to be half cut already.
‘Evening, ladies,’ says Andy, leaning across me to engage Rachel and Sue. ‘Happy with your seats?’
‘They’re fine.’ Sue smiles, her round face dimpling either side of her mouth.
‘The normal space-available staff upgrade,’ sniffs Rachel. ‘You could’ve at least got us all into first.’
‘There’s simply no pleasing some people,’ says Andy.
‘Anyway,’ Rachel continues, ‘who else is coming on this little trip with us?’
‘Well,’ says Andy, putting his elbow on my armrest as he leans right over, ‘there’s Craig.’
‘Yes,’ says Rachel.
‘You two.’
She smiles.
‘Gareth, Loraine, Edith, and Tom, who has just recently decided to join us.’
‘Oh.’ She suddenly sounds a little more interested. ‘Is Edith the one who . . .?’
‘Yes,’ replies Andy.
‘Right,’ says Rachel, turning immediately to fill Susan in on the gossip.
And when it comes to Edith, there is plenty to gossip about. A sweet Essex girl in her late twenties, Edith somewhat usually had an affair with one of the pilots but made the mistake of getting pregnant, and the airline somewhat unusually flew her to Thailand for an abortion. There was quite a bit of pressure put on her to take the airline’s option. It was explained to her that if she wanted a career with us, abortion was perhaps the best move. The pilot was a valuable and expensive captain and she was a hostess with potential. The airline has done this before – rather heavily suggested that pregnant, unmarried air hostesses have terminations in this Bangkok clinic where we seem to have some sort of deal. And we aren’t the only outfit to do it. It’s quite a common practice, particularly in the Middle Eastern airlines. The scandal is that Edith apparently hasn’t handled it terribly well. Andy tells me that she has a bit of a temazepam problem. As you know, this is not unusual for a flight attendant, but when the accusation comes from Andy I suspect it’s
quite bad. In fact, I am surprised to hear that she is flying at all.
‘All right there, Edith?’ asks Andy as she comes through the cabin handing out the drinks.
‘Fine.’ She smiles weakly. Her face is pale beneath the trowel-load of make-up she’s smeared on. Her thin, mousey hair is scraped back into a bun. You’d never guess, looking at her now, that she used to be the life and soul of the party. ‘Champagne, orange juice or water?’
‘Champagne, of course,’ replies Andy. ‘Looking forward to downroute?’
‘Absolutely,’ she says, with all the enthusiasm of a drowned rat. ‘We’re all very excited.’
‘Champagne?’ asks a male voice.
‘Hello there!’ I say, looking up to see Gareth.
Gareth’s a tall, thin bloke in his late forties or early fifties with dark slap-down hair and an Adam’s apple that slides up and down his throat as he speaks. He is the cabin services director – the bloke in charge of the whole plane. He’s been with the company for years and has complained about it for years. Unfortunately his partner, both business and sexual, runs an import/export business and Gareth gets him free flights and free freight. Whether it’s Triumph motorbikes from India or yards of silk from Thailand, Gareth’s position means that the goods fly for nix, as does Larry, his partner. So Gareth is kind of stuck with his job for the sake of his partner, and is possibly a little bit bitter about it.
Air Babylon Page 19