The steady hum of the four Pratt & Whitney engines had lulled my senses to a state of pleasant reverie. The Boeing 707 named after one of the great peaks of the Himalaya was cruising effortlessly over the southern skies of Iran when suddenly there was a wild buffeting in the empty cabin and all hell seemed to break loose: the staccato tat-tat-tatta-tat ricocheted inside the pressurised cabin as if an army equipped with machine guns had surrounded us and opened fire. I have never experienced war firsthand, but I was brought up on a steady diet of World War II movies in the 1960s and early 70s like The Longest Day and Battle of the Bulge, so my mind jumped to a predetermined conclusion!
It was early 1979, Shah Pahlavi of Iran had fled the country, the Islamic Revolution masterminded by Ayatollah Khomeini was in full swing and this Air India flight had taken off from Dubai with the express purpose of evacuating Indian nationals holed up in the building terminal of Meharabad airport in Teheran. Within a few minutes, the sharp hammering on the metal fuselage stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief...the seasoned fliers inside the cockpit muttered something about having just flown through a hailstorm. My senior colleagues in the cabin laughed at my nervousness. I was a relative newcomer, having joined Air India in April 1977. I still had a long way to go!
The tone of the engines changed as we lost altitude and I secured the galley for the impact of landing and strapped on the harness style seat belt on the crew seat. I looked at the iconic picture of the famous Air India Maharajah (the beloved mascot of the airline conceived by Bobby Kooka) painted on the door above the porthole sized window, smiled at his curving whiskers, and waited for the roar and thud of touchdown. Nothing happened for a long time. It then dawned on me that we were not losing altitude as we should have by now, but merely going round in circles. No, there was no traffic congestion. The fact was there were no air traffic controllers in the tower! Everyone had joined the Revolution! Jets were stacked up in the sky above and below, and once they ran out of fuel, they would plummet like stones...
A pilot in one of the circling aircraft had a smart idea: since all of them were on the same radio wavelength, they would initiate a self regulated landing sequence. This was duly accomplished and we touched down safe and sound, before the engines roared in reverse thrust and we began to taxi to the terminal buildings. As soon as the door swung open, the Air India airport manager rushed in to brief the crew : the more than 100 passengers that were about to board had spent the last couple of days at the airport and were itching to get back home to India. He apologised that due to the prevalent circumstances, he was unable to load the galley with any food...all he could lay his hands on were some bread rolls and butter. This was duly stacked up in the small galley where I had been assigned to work.
No time was lost in boarding the passengers. As each of them entered the plane, their faces broke into smiles of relief. Eating a hot meal was obviously the last thing on their minds. They just wanted to get the hell out of the chaos that the city had descended into. We closed the doors soon after and roared out of Meharabad airport. The mountains behind Teheran receded below us as the pilot set a heading for Dubai. Those of us who had had layovers in Teheran were sad that operations to this city had stopped. We had fond memories of the rich Persian cuisine, the smartly dressed women, the very western feel of this city in the Middle East. Our pattern of operations would take us from Bombay to Teheran, give us a couple of days' break here, then we would fly on to London and back to Bombay via Cairo where we would stop for a few days again. Or we would do the loop in reverse. In Cairo, we would be lodged at the Mena House Oberoi within walking distance from the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx! I have clambered up to the top of one of the three pyramids - the pyramid of Khufu - and written my name on the log book at the top! Since the 1980s, the Egyptian authorities have rightly banned all ascents of any of the pyramids....the soles of millions of sweaty tourists might have eventually eroded the ancient wonder of the world!
What had I done to get so lucky? How did I happen to end up in Air India as an Assistant Flight Purser (as male flight attendants were designated by the company back then)? Aha! therein hangs a tale...I shall get to it in my next post.
For the moment, ponder this : if Air India had been a privately owned airline, would it have spent millions of rupees in evacuating thousands of Indian citizens in their time of dire need from places like Iran at the height of the revolution? Would a private airline consider it economically viable to rescue thousands who had fled to Amman in Jordan as Iraq invaded Kuwait in the first Gulf War?
Air India is a much maligned entity today. It seems to be fair game for the media to level their rocket launchers at and literally have a blast. And the cabin crew of Air India have suffered even more media damage. Over the course of the past few decades, their contributions to the national airline and the pride that the founder J.R.D. Tata showed in them has somehow been forgotten. It seems to be mired in a financial mess and always hits the media headlines for all the wrong reasons.
I am not a journalist with an agenda. I merely hope to convey via my posts on this blog what it felt like to live and breathe as a flight attendant for 28 years in Air India. I have no axe to grind and nothing to prove. I often remind myself that those three decades in the airline gave me opportunities I would not have dreamt of otherwise:
It was early 1979, Shah Pahlavi of Iran had fled the country, the Islamic Revolution masterminded by Ayatollah Khomeini was in full swing and this Air India flight had taken off from Dubai with the express purpose of evacuating Indian nationals holed up in the building terminal of Meharabad airport in Teheran. Within a few minutes, the sharp hammering on the metal fuselage stopped and I breathed a sigh of relief...the seasoned fliers inside the cockpit muttered something about having just flown through a hailstorm. My senior colleagues in the cabin laughed at my nervousness. I was a relative newcomer, having joined Air India in April 1977. I still had a long way to go!
The tone of the engines changed as we lost altitude and I secured the galley for the impact of landing and strapped on the harness style seat belt on the crew seat. I looked at the iconic picture of the famous Air India Maharajah (the beloved mascot of the airline conceived by Bobby Kooka) painted on the door above the porthole sized window, smiled at his curving whiskers, and waited for the roar and thud of touchdown. Nothing happened for a long time. It then dawned on me that we were not losing altitude as we should have by now, but merely going round in circles. No, there was no traffic congestion. The fact was there were no air traffic controllers in the tower! Everyone had joined the Revolution! Jets were stacked up in the sky above and below, and once they ran out of fuel, they would plummet like stones...
A pilot in one of the circling aircraft had a smart idea: since all of them were on the same radio wavelength, they would initiate a self regulated landing sequence. This was duly accomplished and we touched down safe and sound, before the engines roared in reverse thrust and we began to taxi to the terminal buildings. As soon as the door swung open, the Air India airport manager rushed in to brief the crew : the more than 100 passengers that were about to board had spent the last couple of days at the airport and were itching to get back home to India. He apologised that due to the prevalent circumstances, he was unable to load the galley with any food...all he could lay his hands on were some bread rolls and butter. This was duly stacked up in the small galley where I had been assigned to work.
No time was lost in boarding the passengers. As each of them entered the plane, their faces broke into smiles of relief. Eating a hot meal was obviously the last thing on their minds. They just wanted to get the hell out of the chaos that the city had descended into. We closed the doors soon after and roared out of Meharabad airport. The mountains behind Teheran receded below us as the pilot set a heading for Dubai. Those of us who had had layovers in Teheran were sad that operations to this city had stopped. We had fond memories of the rich Persian cuisine, the smartly dressed women, the very western feel of this city in the Middle East. Our pattern of operations would take us from Bombay to Teheran, give us a couple of days' break here, then we would fly on to London and back to Bombay via Cairo where we would stop for a few days again. Or we would do the loop in reverse. In Cairo, we would be lodged at the Mena House Oberoi within walking distance from the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx! I have clambered up to the top of one of the three pyramids - the pyramid of Khufu - and written my name on the log book at the top! Since the 1980s, the Egyptian authorities have rightly banned all ascents of any of the pyramids....the soles of millions of sweaty tourists might have eventually eroded the ancient wonder of the world!
 |
| Jasmine Dalal (middle) and Charmaine Fernandes (right) trying to solve the riddle of the Sphinx with a little help from Egyptian children! |
What had I done to get so lucky? How did I happen to end up in Air India as an Assistant Flight Purser (as male flight attendants were designated by the company back then)? Aha! therein hangs a tale...I shall get to it in my next post.
For the moment, ponder this : if Air India had been a privately owned airline, would it have spent millions of rupees in evacuating thousands of Indian citizens in their time of dire need from places like Iran at the height of the revolution? Would a private airline consider it economically viable to rescue thousands who had fled to Amman in Jordan as Iraq invaded Kuwait in the first Gulf War?
Air India is a much maligned entity today. It seems to be fair game for the media to level their rocket launchers at and literally have a blast. And the cabin crew of Air India have suffered even more media damage. Over the course of the past few decades, their contributions to the national airline and the pride that the founder J.R.D. Tata showed in them has somehow been forgotten. It seems to be mired in a financial mess and always hits the media headlines for all the wrong reasons.
I am not a journalist with an agenda. I merely hope to convey via my posts on this blog what it felt like to live and breathe as a flight attendant for 28 years in Air India. I have no axe to grind and nothing to prove. I often remind myself that those three decades in the airline gave me opportunities I would not have dreamt of otherwise:
- Because of Air India I have seen plays on Broadway. "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas" was the first!
- Because of Air India I have seen Tchaikovsky's "Swan Lake" performed by the world famous Russian Ballet and seen the artistes of the Russian Circus execute jaw-dropping stunts.
- Because of Air India I have seen the inside of the Kremlin and gawked at Catherine the Great's carriage and the treasures of the Czars - from what I saw, they damn well deserved to be uprooted by the Russian Revolution!
- Because of Air India I have seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre, Michaelangelo's paintings in the Vatican, Van Gogh's "Sunflower" and other paintings in Amsterdam, and cycled for miles in the Dutch countryside.
- Because of Air India I have marvelled at the exhibits in the British Museum, the National and Tate Galleries, and had the opportunity to rock climb in Wales and hike in the Lake District.
- Because of Air India I have been able to parachute in Perth and dive in the pellucid blue waters off the coast of Dar Es Salaam.
- Because of Air India I have been able to take the time off to climb and trek in the Himalaya and the Sahyadri.
- And finally, because of Air India I am writing this blog!
The above is by no means an exhaustive list of what I have done and could do because I worked as a Flight Attendant. I could go on and on....I made up the list just to give you an idea of the perks of the profession that I have enjoyed. This is not to say that the job is a perpetual honeymoon....it comes with a price! If I were to post an ad in the media for this job today, it would read something like this:
"The position is ideally suited for candidates who enjoy multi-tasking in a fast paced environment. Experience in nursing babies, attending to invalid geriatrics, unclogging toilets, scraping human feces off the carpet, and handling drunk, offensive and aggressive passengers without a flying kick to the solar plexus, unravelling the mysteries of seat duplication, the use of lateral thinking in stowing over sized cabin baggage - all these would be considered an asset. Grinning from ear to ear as if you meant it even though your body is trying to cope with sleep deprivation and a 12 hour time difference would be expected from the ideal candidate."
I hope to keep you amused and entertained as we journey back through time at 30,000 feet and above!
Welcome aboard!
Heart-felt,but still miss the Mountain-Man stories!
ReplyDeleteI was in Cairo on an Accidental run due to the volcanic ash episode of a couple of years back,the Sphinx is barely recognizable-a mere pile of bricks and rubble,but the famous pyramids are still a magical sight!
Brings back memories of the good old days, how can one forget the good times Air India has given us.We owe it to this glorious company to bring back its former glory.Times are changing, one hopes its for better.
ReplyDeleteAny more accident????
Great reading, Aloke.
ReplyDeletevery vividly written will await your next one
ReplyDeleteuday joshi
Hello Alok warm greetings to you and your fly, an excellent article , just reading the memories came to me how you took me around in nyc on my first flt, you always enjoyed travelling sightseeing, its so true how things have changed in our company, those lovely layovers , good crew and the fun is over we all just doing our job, but do hope it gets better.
ReplyDeleteAloke The hotel within walking distance of the Pyramids was/is The Mena House Oberois not the Hilton
ReplyDeleteBy far the best written article that I have come across on these pages. Keep it up, Aloke. We are waiting for the next one.
ReplyDeleteEncore Aloke !Happy days are here again ?
ReplyDeleteEncore, Aloke
ReplyDeleteThank you everyone!
ReplyDeleteVery well written ! Yes Cairo,the hotel, and it's location were a dream. We will all be waiting for the next post....... "the happy secret behind the accidental blogger's recruitment."
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely wonderful..... yes the airlines have given us so much opportunities, didnt realise till I read this article.
ReplyDeleteWhen I look back on the 28 years with the airline,it comes as almost a shock to realise the tremendous exposure to the world and the opportunities that came my way because of my profession...
Delete