Flying About

SEPTEMBER 2002 - The national airline is a sitting duck most of the year round considering that invariably it is open season on everyone’s pet hate. There is hardly a week when some letters don’t appear in the national press portraying in vivid detail the horrors that paying passengers undergo whenever they choose to fly PIA. Stories of passengers stranded for hours at hostile airports while PIA staff stage extraordinary disappearing acts, are fairly common. So are stories about the traveling public denied food and shelter and left to fend for themselves, about babies crying out for milk while no one from the airline is around to help and about deliberate withholding of unpleasant information with delays running into hours. The PIA public affairs division runs from pillar to post, as the popular saying goes, trying to stave off the bad PR stories and issuing denials and clarifications no one wants to buy.

Not exactly a follower of Marco Polo’s and having studiously avoided the national airline for as long as it was possible – being a firm believer in the popular axiom that PIA is at best, Perhaps I Arrive, and experiences confined to hopping on Islamabad or Karachi flights now and then, there was nothing but trepidation earlier this month when self and the national airline came face to face on a trip to Europe and back – all within a week. Apart from the fact that the airline is drier than the sands of Gobi Desert, which means that whiling away the long hours would truly be an ordeal – after all how much ‘biryani’ can you eat till you are drugged to sleep – and contemplating the great airline ready reckoner – the dreaded ‘fanni kharabi’ – technical glitch, there was the added prospect of spending close to half a day with the eternal Pakistan crying baby syndrome. It may not matter much to those who are deaf but for most of those not so afflicted, the shattering sounds of howling babies can send the bravest and stoutest men scurrying for cover. It is a universally established fact that no other nation produces children who can cry so long and so loudly without any visible reason than those that we produce in the millions every year. There can be no flight without numerous children from the age of 3 minutes to 10 years who can set up a wail and then maintain it till you cross the Hindukush mountains, swing over the Central Asian States and skim past Moscow. Mothers toss them in the air, shake rattles, rock them left to right and right to left, then east to west and north to south, fathers usually watching with a great deal of disinterest have been known to eventually join the festivities and offer largely unhelpful suggestions. Sisters if traveling are summoned to help out as the squalls get higher and higher and a kind of ferocious screaming fit envelops the child who seems to have demons inside screaming to get out. Milk bottles are thrust into unwilling mouths, water bottles follow, soothers are slapped aside and entreaties, cooing sounds, out of tune ditties and lullabys follow in wild profusion, but the screams get louder and louder. Hail Mother of Mercy, where does a six month old package draw that kind of stamina or is it that by just being Pakistani, he can really crack the heavens? Rest easy – going and coming, the noise louder than the roar of the great engines, was the sound of children yelling and weeping for reasons largely beyond the ken of human understanding. Allah be praised.

Other than the fact that in spite of having confirmed seats that had been re-confirmed with stamps and adhesive things stuck and stamped again – and even having booked seats in row 21 – a clever move in the Airbuses where 21 means ample leg-stretch room, it was business as usual to find we had no presence on the PIA computers at the airport. We were simply not there – no names, first, last or middle that the computer could identify. As the patient staffer punched keys on a computer that had not been cleaned since it was bought years ago and which had more ballpoint graffiti on it than the walls of a ghetto in New York, the response was the same. We were not listed. It took an hour to find us in cyberspace and the line behind us had swelled to the back of the GOC’s spacious bungalow in Lahore Cantonment when we were punched in. Thereafter many people stamped and re-stamped us everywhere, again and again, till there was no area where we had not been stamped. We wait for the day when they will ask us to remove our underwear and stamp us just to make sure. One set of photocopies was gobbled up by one set of determined-looking officials and just as we thought we had beaten everyone to the post, two sets of our photocopied passports were gobbled up by another set of determined-looking officials, who had no desk but no dearth of enthusiasm. When asked who they were, since we had not been formally introduced, they simply replied, ‘Task Force.’ Of what and whom we didn’t ask. Such questions are pointless in a country where there is more bureaucracy than flies. Deprived of all our photocopies and rubber stamped everywhere, we fell into the departure lounge, exhausted even before we had boarded.

When the flight was announced – it left almost on time, which was a nice surprise, we were not stamped again but all of us had to do an Elvis Presley number to show off the various points where so many helpful people had so efficiently stamped us. Now, various officials examined boarding cards, tore parts of them off, then more parts off till armed with a bit of a little sliver we were able to trudge to the aircraft and board only to be greeted by wailing and weeping from the little tykes with vocal chords that would put Placido Domingo out of business. This may be far fetched, but there seems to be a perceptible change in the cabin crew attitude. There are far more smiles than there used to be and the air of hostility that marked the relationship between passengers and cabin crew seems to have mellowed a bit. The male crew looked helpful and willing to attend quickly. This was cattle class mind you so we were dealing with the real thing. Of course two of the four bathrooms were out of commission even before we had left and when 250 odd people are piling into two bathrooms – and given our national culture of bathroom etiquette, it was a wonder the plane didn’t stink. Why the baths were not functioning is beyond me. However if anyone was looking for the black hole in space, it was there. When stainless steel toilets can turn dark brown, only long neglect is the reason.

The thing is, most PIA travelers are prepared to put up with old aircraft and fading tapestry. We all understand that PIA is a poor airline and the swish, style and feel of new interiors and sleek aircraft at your service, is not for us, but what about the important small things which can be drastically improved and don’t cost an arm and a leg? There was no reading material either way. Nothing other than the sick bag, which is not yet on the New York, best seller list. There was no information on what they were showing on TV, not that it was anything to write about – this was announced going and coming back, even that was dispensed with. The music channels contained awful stuff – cannot be described and the TV programs seemed to have been collected from some garbage can in America – apparently there are people who are on PIA’s payroll who roam the globe looking for suitable material! The duty free that PIA offers has become an embarrassment –even the crew is embarrassed. It is a pathetic display. My neighbourhood ‘khoka’ has more variety of perfumes and cigarettes at better prices. What is this? Why not dump it altogether? These are inexpensive things and can do a lot for the airline’s image, but who is going to start making the little changes and not simply keep searching for planes. And will someone please service the computers and printers at the airports. They look hazardous to health.