There are some films, however, that would never make it on to a plane. Anything that has too much sex and violence, for a start. Nudity and gambling are banned from Arab flights, and the film Alive, about a plane crash in South America where the survivors are reduced to eating one another, has never been shown anywhere. Neither, these days, are films about hijackings or terrorism, or films with scenes showing aircraft in ‘extreme or distressing situations’. So you can see why it’s so much easier for us to plump for a nice, simple, safe Hugh Grant movie.
The captive audience, sitting there for hours at a time, are an advertiser’s dream. And with airlines operating at a 5 per cent profit margin, at the mercy of world markets, SARS and terrorist attacks, it’s no wonder that more and more advertising is creeping on to planes. Spots either side of the news can go for as much as £1m a run, and when you consider that there are thirteen million flying BA a month and your average businessman works only for the first hour of the flight, you can see that it’s worth it. Charge him up to five dollars a minute for the use of a mobile in the air, and one dollar per text, and sooner or later your skimpy 5 per cent profit margin starts to look a little more healthy.
I reach into the pocket in front of me searching for my earphones. I pull out the sick bag, a curled in-flight magazine with Billie Piper on the front, an old terry sock, and that’s it. Not only are there no earphones, but my safety card is also missing. It’s probably been nicked. Everything on board the plane that isn’t actually bolted down gets pinched at some point. The earphones always go, which is why we try to collect them at the end of the flight, as do weird things like the safety cards, the antimacassars, the blankets and the pillows. And it’s not always the passengers who do the pilfering. I remember a story about the mother of a mate of mine who was a hostie working the Concorde flights from London to New York. She was eventually fired for stealing the goose-down pillows they used to have on board. She was saving them up to make a duvet and was almost there when she was discovered. Then again, she’d always been quite naughty. I remember she had a Chinese chest in her living room that she used to call her ‘retirement fund’. It was stuffed with fifteen thousand miniatures. At the end of every trip she ever made, she’d come home with her knickers and bra full of Gordon’s and Teachers.
I ring the attendant bell. Gareth comes out of the galley.
‘Yes, sir?’ he says, exuding genuflecting sincerity.
‘You don’t seem to have handed out the earphones,’ I say.
‘Oh God,’ he moans. ‘All that puke has put everyone off their game tonight. I’ll get Edith to hand them out right away. I wonder if they’ve done it in tourist,’ he mumbles, walking off towards the back of the plane.
‘Are you going to watch a film?’ asks Andy, sounding mildly put out.
‘Well . . .’
‘Thanks a bunch,’ he says. ‘If I fancied watching a film, I’d have stayed at home.’
‘Sorry, it’s been a long day and I’m just a bit—’
‘It’s my birthday!’ he moans. ‘You can’t watch a film. What are you going to watch?’
‘It’s a Hugh Grant movie.’
‘Jesus Christ!’ He starts to laugh. ‘I’m being abandoned for a Hugh Grant movie. Fuck me, my conversational abilities must be bad.’
‘No, it’s just that I fancied—’
‘Sue? Rachel?’ he says, leaning across me again. ‘He wants to watch a Hugh Grant movie!’ Andy points an accusing finger at me. ‘Can you believe it?’ I can feel my face turning red as Sue and Rachel both turn around and look at me.
‘Honestly,’ says Rachel. ‘It’s his birthday.’
‘My point exactly,’ says Andy.
‘Would you like some earphones?’ asks Edith, walking past with a whole load hanging over her arm.
‘Um.’ I pause. ‘No thanks.’
‘Oh,’ she replies. ‘Earphones?’ she asks Sue and Rachel. They both decline. Edith moves on.
‘Thank you,’ says Andy, leaning back into his chair. ‘Now,’ he adds, rubbing his hands together, ‘d’you want another drink?’
‘All right. But I can’t take any more of that English white wine.’
‘No,’ he agrees, his face crumpling. ‘How about a vodka?’
‘Great.’ I smile and push my tray to one side. ‘You get me one while I just go into first for a sec for a piss and to stretch my legs.’
‘You’re on,’ he says. ‘And check out Fun Five for me while you’re about it.’
Moving into first should be like moving into a different world. It should smell different, sound different and above all exude the luxury and comfort of a £5,000 ticket. Singapore Airlines’ first-class passengers lounge around on seventy-six-inch seatbeds with down-filled duvets. Their cabin staff turn down their beds while the passengers slip into their Givenchy pyjamas. Virgin provide double beds, stand-up bars and an in-flight manicurist and masseuse. They also have fourteen different ‘lighting moods’ that can be adjusted by the crew. Swiss have Eames-style seating with a dining table and an extra seat so that the passenger could be ‘joined’ for dinner. BA have flatbeds, and Air Canada boasts sculpted sleepers with a massage function. We can only stretch to an extra-large leather seat that reclines to a twenty-five-degree angle. Even our goodie bag is a bit poor. While other airlines load their first-class passengers down with bottles of Molton Brown, shoes, lip balms and a rubber duck (if you’re on Virgin), we hand out some red jogging pants, a pair of cloth flip-flops and a terry eyeshade.
At least it does smell a bit different from club. Here, the vomit seems to give way to a strong smell of aftershave, and the aroma of old lamb curry is replaced by the smell of truffle oil.
‘All right there?’ asks Belinda from the galley as she sees me come through the curtains.
‘Fine,’ I say. ‘Just stretching the legs.’
‘OK,’ she says, adding some ineffectual-looking canapés to her tray of drinks. ‘Gareth’s on the flight deck,’ she adds, pushing out in front of me.
‘Oh, OK,’ I say, following her.
Her hips develop a serious swagger as she approaches the boy band.
‘Here you go, boys,’ she purrs as she puts down the drinks.
‘Wa-hey,’ they all leer together.
She bends over in front of me. A hand covered in thick silver rings slips swiftly up the back of her skirt and cups her buttocks. She doesn’t appear to be wearing any underwear or to feel the need to move in any way.
‘Gin and tonic for you,’ she trills, ‘vodka on the rocks for you.’ She leans over some more. The hand moves higher; she snakes her hips. ‘Anything else for you two over there?’
‘More champagne,’ comes the reply. ‘And you can forget the snacks.’
‘OK,’ she says, turning around to see me. ‘Back in a sec,’ she declares, looking me straight in the eye.
‘Excuse me,’ I say as I squeeze past her in the aisle.
‘That’s fine,’ she says, brushing up against me. I swear she rubs her breasts against my back.
I walk through the rest of the cabin which is positively comatose compared to the reek of sexual tension at the back. There are a couple of businessmen in red jogging pants, sipping brandy or port, giggling along to the Hugh Grant movie. There’s a young woman fast asleep with her eye mask on and her mouth wide open. An elderly man is reading The Da Vinci Code with his seat bolt upright and his shoes firmly on. There’s a middle-aged couple going through a selection of property magazines – the holiday-home market is picking up in Dubai. There are the sheikh’s two wives, still in their black chadors, reading brightly coloured magazines, and the sheikh himself is looking through some business papers in the row in front. And then, right at the end, leaning against the back wall, is Gareth. He is talking to Loraine.
‘And then I said to her, “If you want to keep the baby, you should.” But then she said . . . Evening,’ says Gareth as he sees me approach.
‘Oh, hello,’ says Loraine, her glossy lip
s breaking into a smile. ‘Had enough in steerage, have we?’
‘Just stretching my legs.’
‘Right,’ says Gareth.
‘It’s all a bit hot and steamy up here,’ I say, smiling and rubbing my hands together.
‘Yeah,’ says Loraine. ‘Gareth and I were just discussing that. We think the band have dropped an E.’
‘D’you think?’
‘Yeah.’ Gareth rolls his eyes. ‘It’s all we bloody need. A bloody boy band on bloody Ecstasy.’
‘Are you sure?’
‘Well,’ says Loraine, ‘they were perfectly normal to start with and then after a while they became like a group of octopuses, wandering hands everywhere. One of them even tried to dance along to the “fasten seat belt” bell.’
‘It’s hardly subtle, is it?’ says Gareth.
‘Belinda doesn’t seem to mind,’ I say.
‘Yeah, well,’ says Loraine, raising a finely plucked eyebrow. ‘We all know about her.’
‘Richard around?’ I ask, sensing something I don’t want to get into. ‘Or is he having a sleep?’
‘I was just about to give him this smoked salmon sandwich,’ says Loraine. ‘You can take it in if you like.’
‘Great.’
Loraine picks up the intercom. ‘The weather is good for this time of year. Would you like a pickled herring?’
‘In you come,’ comes the reply.
‘The password is pickled herring,’ whispers Loraine into my ear.
‘Thanks. I would never have guessed.’
The flight-deck door opens. The first officer, Ashley, is standing there in his socks.
‘Oh,’ he says, sounding a tad disappointed, ‘it’s you.’
‘Sorry, mate,’ I say, handing over the smoked salmon sandwich. ‘Is this for you?’
‘No,’ he says, turning back towards the controls. ‘It’s Richard’s, but he’s having a conversation with Air Traffic Control UK.’
‘UK? Surely we must be out of UK airspace by now?’
‘Miles away,’ says Ashley, ‘but someone’s left a wheel behind on the runway at the airport and we’re trying to work out if it’s us.’
‘A wheel?’
‘Yup,’ he says, turning around and picking up a crossword puzzle. ‘Do you know the answer to this? Look with difficulty at Lords.’
‘Sorry?’ I say, still somewhat sidetracked by the wheel announcement.
‘Peer!’ says Richard, turning around, snapping his fingers and tugging one of his earphones away from his ear. ‘Fucking peer,’ he repeats. ‘I knew if I thought about it for a second I’d get it. I’d have got it sooner had I not had to chat to bloody London. Of course, it’s peer! How fucking thick of me.’ He pauses. ‘How are you, mate?’ he asks me.
‘Fine,’ I say, sitting down in the jumpseat, taking in the rows of buttons, levers and screens glinting against the night sky.
‘Roma, Roma, Roma,’ comes a call down the radio.
‘D’you want to take that, Ashley?’ says Richard, picking up the crossword. ‘I’ve spoken to them enough this evening.’
‘Sure,’ says Ashley, turning back to the controls. ‘Roma, over?’ he says, engaging Italian air traffic control.
‘So, how’s it going back there?’ asks Richard, half talking to me, half doing the crossword, not at all flying the plane.
‘Not too bad. Andy’s on his third or fourth bottle of champagne . . .’
‘Good lad.’
‘Sue and Rachel are enjoying themselves . . .’
‘Excellent.’
‘And the boy band appear to have taken Ecstasy.’
‘Right. I saw them coming in,’ he says, looking up and indicating to the camera at the back of the flight deck from where he, the first officer and half the crew watch all the passengers board the plane, usually giving them marks out of ten. ‘They looked like trouble. Loraine only gave them six. Was it six?’ he asks Ashley. Ashley nods. ‘But Belinda seems a bit more impressed. Are they being very leery?’
‘Quite,’ I say.
‘Do you think I need to show my face?’
‘No. I think Belinda has them under control.’
‘Good.’ He smiles. ‘I can’t believe you’ve got four down,’ he says to Ashley. Ashley cocks an imaginary gun made from the first two fingers of his right hand. He shoots the windshield and then cools the barrel with a blow to his hand. ‘Yeah, well,’ says Richard. ‘If I hadn’t been on the blower to Swanwick I might have got it.’
‘So what’s this about someone losing a wheel?’
‘It’s not someone, it’s us,’ says Richard.
‘Oh.’
‘Yeah. Nothing we can do about it now.’ He picks up his smoked salmon sandwich and takes a bite. ‘Mmm, that’s good.’ He munches away. ‘We’ll have to wait until it gets light then I’ll take a look outside the window to see if we can see which one it is. If not, we’ll have to fly low over Dubai air traffic control to see if they can take a look at our undercarriage.’
‘Right,’ I say. ‘It’s not too bad?’
‘If it’s a side wheel, we’re fine. If it’s the front, we’re fucked.’
‘How likely is it that it’s the front?’ I smile, waiting for reassurance.
‘One in three,’ he says, looking down at the crossword. ‘Jesus, Ashley,’ he announces suddenly, ‘have you just farted?’
The warm smell of wet egg and cheese and onion crisps engulfs the flight deck.
‘Sorry, mate,’ replies Ashley, taking his comms away from his mouth. ‘I couldn’t help myself.’
‘Next time Loraine offers you some fucking egg sandwiches, you bloody say no,’ says Richard. ‘Honestly, it smells worse in here than travelling with old Dave Morris, and he used to smoke a bloody cigar all the way to Sydney. Or that other bloke James who still goes into the galley and smokes his Silk Cut, blowing the smoke down the plughole.’
Life inside the flight deck of a plane is a world unto itself. Sealed off from the outside world and only disturbed by the flight attendants every twenty minutes to see if they are in need of more food or refreshments, the captain and first officer can do more or less what they want. With autopilot able to land a plane in CAT 3 (thick fog with fifty feet visibility) and take off again at a moment’s notice, the captain no longer has to fly the plane at all. This frees him up to read a newspaper, do a crossword, moan about his pay, terms and conditions, bitch about colleagues, eat, drink, fart, compare cars/houses/holidays/stereos/wives with his number two, whinge about getting up early, complain about the quality of the new flight attendants or, in the recent case of two pilots, strip off totally naked and have sex. To be fair, no-one actually saw them in flagrante, but they were discovered stark naked in the cockpit while supposedly flying the plane. Their excuse, before they were fired, was that one of them had spilt a drink. But other than sit there, calling in to various air traffic controls en route and listening out for alarm bells or for the American-voiced TCAAS (Traffic Collision Aviation Avoidance System) telling you to ‘go down, go down’, there is very little for the pilot actually to do.
I used to have a mate who flew short-haul flights for a budget airline who said that flying a plane was like driving a bus. They had ten destinations and the idea was to get the passengers there, get them out and get the next lot on as quickly as possible. He said they were the only airline to accelerate after they landed in order to get to their drop-off point as quickly as possible. He lived in London and commuted for sixteen hours a week to Stansted and back every day. The only place he did have a stopover of sorts was his Saturday-night flight to Ibiza and back, where he and the first officer had to sleep on the floor of the flight deck because there wasn’t enough time to get to a hotel and back before the early-morning flight. He hated those Ibiza flights. He said that about ten minutes into the flight all the clubbers at the back would develop the ‘Ibiza Cough’. They were so tired and dehydrated having come straight from the clubs, dressed in cropped tops and mini skirt
s and coming down off their drugs, that they couldn’t cope with not smoking and the air-con. They’d cough their guts out all the way to Stansted. You can understand why after he made back the £80,000 he’d had to shell out to train himself (the airlines don’t train pilots like they used to; instead, like many businesses these days, they rely on a fresh supply from Eastern Europe) he sold up and bought a boat to sail around the world.
Long haul is slightly different. For a start there are a couple more officers on the flight deck. Known as second officers, they are there principally to rest while the captain takes off. They lie in the bunks behind the soundproof curtains eating, sleeping and reading until the captain and the first officer grow tired and want a lie down themselves. The second officers can fold maps and call in to air traffic controls, making sure that the airline has paid the ‘navigation fee’ for the plane to travel in that particular country’s airspace, but as soon as an alarm bell rings the first thing they do is wake the captain.
As we are only flying to Dubai tonight the second-officer bunks are empty. Although these bunks have been used for purposes other than resting second officers before. I know of one of our captains who enjoyed a blow job from an over-enthusiastic hostie while the plane was taking off, only for a foursome to develop later on between the captain, the first officer and two hostesses. This ménage à quatre obviously made full use of the bunks provided.
Air Babylon Page 22