Air Babylon Read online

  About the Book

  Do you know the best place to have sex on a plane? Do you know that one drink in the air equals three on the ground? Do you know who is checking you in? Who is checking you out? Do you know what happens to your luggage once it leaves your sight? Is it secure? Are you safe? Do you really know anything about the industry to which you entrust your life several times a year?

  Air Babylon is a trawl through the highs, the lows and the rapid descents of air travel. It catalogues the births, the deaths, the drunked brawls, the sexual antics and the debauchery behind the scenes of the ultimate service industry – where the world is divided into those who wear the uniform and those who don’t . . .

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  About the Book

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Author’s Note

  5–6 AM

  6–7 AM

  7–8 AM

  8–9 AM

  9–10 AM

  10–11 AM

  11 AM–12 PM

  12–1 PM

  1–2 PM

  2–3 PM

  3–4 PM

  4–5 PM

  5–6 PM

  6–7 PM

  7–8 PM

  8–9 PM

  9–10 PM

  10–11 PM

  11 PM–12 AM

  12–1 AM

  1–2 AM

  2–3 AM

  3–4 AM

  4–5 AM

  About the Author

  Also by Imogen Edwards-Jones

  Copyright

  Air Babylon

  Imogen Edwards-Jones

  & Anonymous

  For The Passenger –

  whoever you may be

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  With very grateful thanks to the wonderful Eugenie Furniss and Stephanie Cabot, the industrious Jenny Dare, the handsome Doug Young, and all of Transworld for their fabulousness.

  And to all the people whose time and patience I called upon during the hours and days I spent interviewing them in cafés, offices, warehouses and cold damp corridors: I am extremely thankful as I could not have done this without your humour, trust and kind cooperation.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  All of the following is true. Only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. The anecdotes, stories, situations, highs, lows, scams, drugs, love, death and insanity are all as told to me by Anonymous – a wide and varied collection of people who work at the heart of the airline industry. The airport is fictionalized but the incidents are real, the celebrities play themselves, but the stories now all take place within a single fictitious airline known as Air Babylon. Narrated by Anonymous, the stories have been condensed into twenty-four hours, but everything else is as it should be. The rich scam up-grades, the poor smuggle themselves into the country, and the greedy spin a profit wherever they can. It’s just another twenty-four hours in the life of the airline industry.

  5–6 AM

  HAVING SPENT THE past ten years working for this airline, you’d have thought I’d have a better parking spot by now. Somewhere within the airport, at least, where I could park up in the short-term multi-storey and walk across without getting bloody rained on. But no. As duty manager, I’m one of the most senior employees my airline has working over here in the UK; I’m in charge of all that goes on in the airport and I am still parking my car at the bloody north perimeter fence along with all the other riff-raff.

  And I’ve got a rubbish car. Well, everyone has a rubbish car if you compare them to the hardware the baggage handlers drive to work. It’s like the forecourt of Jack Barclay out here. It’s known as Jag row, although they aren’t obviously all Jags. I can see a couple of shiny Audis, a BMW, a Lexus and a brand-new Merc glistening in the rain. Quite how baggage handlers manage to afford such glamorous transport on their wages is anyone’s guess. But one thing’s for sure: I won’t be doing the asking.

  I had a run-in with those boys a couple of years back. I found out they were watching the soap opera Neighbours on the TV instead of processing my lunchtime bags onto the carousel. They were causing chaos. I had irate passengers waiting for over an hour for their luggage. It was a nightmare. So I got their TV stopped and had my tyres slashed in return. A similar thing happened to a mate of mine. She was trying to broker a deal with baggage, knock down the quadruple overtime they get paid, change their working conditions a bit. She had her brake lines cut, she received threatening phone calls, and eventually she ended up being driven to and collected from work for her own protection. They are blokes not to be messed with. So now I know to keep my head down and not to ask too many questions.

  It’s still dark as I make my way to the bus stop and wait for the British Airport Authority courtesy transport to take me to the terminal. It’s drizzling slightly. It’s not enough to penetrate my clothes, but it sits on my shoulders like a dank cloak and makes my back feel cold. I stamp my feet slightly and scan the horizon for a glimpse of the dawn. In my job I can go for days at a time without seeing daylight. No wonder I have skin the colour of an avocado and red-rimmed eyes like a smack addict. I am supposed to do a five a.m. to three p.m. shift, but planes get delayed and passengers go crazy, and I’m not often out of the place until well after six p.m., when for half the year the sun has well and truly gone. Some days I don’t even make it home. I check into a nearby hotel for a couple of hours, along with all the other aviation staff, then stumble back across the road to the airport. So you can understand why I am keen to spot just one ray of sunshine to get me through the day. That is, after all, why most us of got into the flying business in the first place. Sun, sand, sea and, of course, the glamour. It all seems rather ironic now, standing here, in the drizzle, waiting for the bus.

  The queue is long. There are at least fifty of us waiting in a quiet, neat line. No-one is talking to anyone. Everyone is avoiding eye contact. I scan the group for anyone I recognize. I don’t often find anyone. Well, there are some seventy thousand of us employed here and the whole airport has to drive to work. The public transport connections to this place are non-existent at this time of day/night, so none of us has much choice. A few of the locals manage to get here, catching the odd passing night bus, but other than that it’s motors all the way.

  I’ve got an old-school air hostess, or more correctly a flight attendant, standing in front of me. She’s in her navy uniform, carrying her hat. She must be in her early forties but she is still slim and ramrod straight, sporting the hair-in-a-bun-and-pearl-earrings combination that used to be regulation some years back. You can always tell the old school from the new school by the way they are turned out. The old school wear pearls, tie their hair up and pile on the make-up. There used to be this rule that eyes and lips had to be visible six rows back, and they all still adhere to it. This one is wearing her high-heeled walking-through-the-airport shoes that make her hips swing as she whisks past the check-in. I suspect her flatter onboard shoes are in her wheeled bag.

  The bus turns up and we all file in in an orderly fashion. It’s weird, but on this journey, which I do every day, no-one ever barges past anyone else. The bus always fills up from the back and everyone takes their orderly place. It’s like the most well-behaved school trip you’ve ever seen.

  We travel to the terminals in silence. Our damp coats and warm breath quickly steam up the inside of the bus. I press my nose against the glass and try to look out. There isn’t much of a view – giant warehouses, the Royal Mail sorting office, rows and rows of parked cars, the catering building that produces some ten thousand non-identifiable chicken dishes a day. The bus does the circuit of the terminals and my stop is last. By the end it’s just me and the old-school hostess. We wander through the r
evolving doors into the building, into the glare of neon strip-lighting. She places her pillbox hat on her brushed and lacquered head and sashays off in the direction of some Far Eastern airline. I turn left, towards the five check-in desks that have been my domain for as long as I can remember.

  Having been closed all night – there are no flights out of the airport after eleven p.m., and no flights coming in before six a.m. – the terminal is just beginning to come to life. Devoid of the usual throng of milling passengers, the place seems strangely empty. There are few signs of life. Two cleaners polish the floors, swinging their humming, hovering machines in ever more jaded circles, and various corpses stir on the seats and benches as I walk past. Tramps, alcoholics, Tube passengers who have fallen asleep and missed the last train home, airline passengers who have missed their flights and can’t afford to stay in any of the nearby hotels – they’ve all bedded down together. Some are more semi-permanent residents: drug addicts who survive by selling discarded Underground tickets, students who have run out of money and need somewhere to crash for a few weeks, and petty thieves who dodge the police and pick pockets for a living. They say that an airport is like a shopping centre with runways, but I always think it’s more like a city. It has the same facilities – its own police, its own ambulance crews, its own church – and it has exactly the same social problems.

  The young shop assistant in WHSmith is struggling under the weight of the morning papers. His face is puffed pink and sweaty as he looks around for someone to help. He is on his own. None of the other shops is quite open yet, although there seems to be someone in Boots, striding around inside the shop, preparing to lift the metal grille and get the show on the road.

  Just as I am walking over to give the poor bloke a hand, I feel a tap on my shoulder.

  ‘Oi, where are you off to?’ comes a familiar voice.

  ‘Andy,’ I say, turning around to smile.

  ‘Morning,’ he declares.

  ‘Morning,’ I reply.

  ‘How’s tricks?’

  ‘Good. You know, the usual.’

  ‘You don’t sound too good,’ he teases. ‘Little bit grumpy.’ He turns down the corners of his mouth.

  ‘No? What? I’m fine. It’s early.’

  ‘Early for some,’ he says with a grin, ‘or late for others. It depends which way you look at it.’

  ‘Right,’ I say, stopping on the concourse and looking him up and down. ‘Have you been out all night again?’

  ‘Not all night,’ he corrects.

  ‘Oh, good,’ I say, a rather large amount of sarcasm creeping into my voice.

  ‘Just most of it.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Well, I had a disco nap till midnight and I’ve come straight from Trade. Can you tell?’

  I have to say, I can’t. For a man who abuses his body and pumps it full of chemicals on a regular basis, Andy looks remarkably well. His permanent tan, acquired on the electric beaches of Sunbury, does much to cover a multitude of sins and heavy nights out. His white blond hair is gelled immaculately into place. His bleached teeth show no signs of nicotine. The only place where last night’s decadence really tells is around the eyes. But Andy’s always slathering on the Clinique eye gel that he gets at a 10 per cent discount at Boots. As airport employees, we all get 10 per cent off in the shops, but Andy’s the only one who really takes advantage of this perk. Once you’ve had a few cheap burgers, bought your mother a scarf from Accessorize and shelled out on some cufflinks in Gucci the thrill tends to wear off. Unless, of course, you are Andy. He loves to shop almost as much as he loves to dance and take drugs.

  And Andy does quite a lot of dancing and taking drugs. You would have thought his drug-taking would be a problem for the management, but I am the management and I don’t really have a problem with it. Well, I can’t really afford to have a problem with it. If I did have a problem with drugs then I’m afraid I’d lose half my check-in staff, particularly at the weekend. Come Saturday or Sunday morning, most of them arrive for work slightly the worse for wear, having spent the night knocking back vodka, Red Bull and Es on a podium in some club, somewhere. But just so long as they are pleasant to customers and do their jobs correctly, I don’t care what they do in their spare time. They get a basic £11,000 a year, and I think we don’t pay people enough to start dictating what they do after hours. Anyway, at least they pop their pills and snort their lines on their own time, which is more than I can say for some flight attendants I could mention.

  ‘I don’t think you look too bad at all,’ I say, inspecting Andy’s proffered-up face. His fingers stretch the skin under his eyes in an attempt to look younger.

  ‘Not bad for an OAP?’ he asks.

  ‘An OAP?’

  ‘Aren’t you forgetting something?’

  ‘Oh, happy birthday,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, happy birthday,’ he mimics. ‘Can’t you say it with a bit more gusto? It’s not every day that a man says goodbye to his youth and embraces middle age.’

  ‘Middle age?’ I laugh. ‘You’re only thirty.’

  ‘Oh, don’t,’ he says, covering his ears and closing his eyes. ‘Don’t tell everyone. D’you have any idea how old that is in gay years?’

  ‘No?’

  ‘I’m practically dead!’ he declares. ‘Gay men age more quickly than dogs.’

  ‘Oh,’ I say. ‘Bad luck.’

  ‘Bad luck!’ he repeats. ‘I’ll be lucky if I ever get laid again.’

  ‘Chance would be a fine thing,’ I say.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I smile. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  ‘Is that all you’re taking?’ he asks, pointing to the small leather rucksack on my back.

  ‘What else do I need?’

  ‘Well, what have you got in there?’

  ‘Toothbrush, trunks, clean underwear. I’m not going for long.’

  ‘Straight men,’ says Andy, and rolls his eyes. ‘You’ve got no idea.’

  I look down at the large, heavy-looking suitcase he is wheeling along beside him. ‘What have you got in there?’

  ‘Outfits,’ he says. ‘Just a few outfits.’

  ‘But we’re not even staying the night.’

  ‘Who’s the birthday boy?’

  ‘You are.’

  ‘Well, what’s wrong with wanting to look your best?’

  ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘Absolutely nothing.’

  We walk into the small office to the side of the check-in desks. Reserved for check-in staff, it smells of cheap coffee, sweet perfume and sweaty trainers. Lit by familiar neon strips, two of the white Artex walls are lined with pegs and it is a dumping ground for coats, bags and shoes. The scene of many a bitching session or crying fit, it is where all members of staff start and end their day.

  Andy and I hang up our coats on our respective pegs and put on our luminous yellow BAA gilets. I put my airside pass on its silver chain around my neck and switch on my black two-way radio. Andy does the same. He is my deputy and as such has to be in contact with me at all times. Working, as we do, both land- and airside, it’s important that each of us knows where the other is at various stages of the day.

  I think about making a cup of coffee using the small plastic kettle in the corner. But I can see there’s no milk, so I decide against it. Anyway, I’ve got such a caffeine and nicotine problem that most of the time my hands shake. I really should cut down, but it’s difficult. That’s one of the problems working here: the hours are so long and anti-social, we all need a little something to get us through the day.

  Andy blows his nose. It sounds like he has a heavy cold.

  ‘Urgh,’ he says, wiping his nostrils. ‘I’ve got a bad case of cocktail flu.’

  ‘I’m off to check the rosters,’ I say. ‘Do you want me to look at anything for you?’

  ‘Oh,’ he says, looking over his handkerchief. ‘Can you just make sure they’ve got me on till seven p.m. tonight. Don’t want to
do all those extra hours and not get paid for it.’

  ‘Especially on your birthday,’ I say.

  ‘Especially on my birthday,’ he echoes with a grin.

  It’s because of Andy’s birthday that we are both working so hard and pulling a near double shift. Instead of knocking off at the usual time, we are working through right up until we get on the 2015 flight to Dubai. Nine of us are going from the UK. Andy and I are the only ground staff who have made the effort; the rest of them are flight attendants, five of whom have requested to work the trip. For someone who doesn’t fly, Andy seems to possess an unnatural number of flying friends. But that is probably because he shares a flat with Craig, a straight flight attendant and the only other person I know who is more badly behaved than Andy. In Dubai we are, supposedly, joining up with more flight attendants who are meeting us there from Thailand, Singapore or Australia. We are arriving early in the morning, partying the whole day and evening, and taking the 0140 flight back, landing at 0445 BST just about in time to start another shift.

  To be honest with you, I am slightly dreading the whole thing. I’m the wrong side of thirty-five, and I feel a bit too old to be gallivanting halfway across the world on a giant piss-up. Don’t get me wrong, I can booze and fly with the best of them. It’s just that I have done rather a lot of it – New York, Rio, Miami – and I thought my day-tripping or weekend-tripping days were behind me. But I was extremely flattered to be asked and I suppose that is the reason I accepted. Andy’s a nice fun guy and I didn’t want to appear to be the dullard boss who was too boring to make it. So now I am pulling a double shift, doing an eight-hour flight, indulging in a day-long drinking binge, followed by another eight-hour flight, and all in the pursuit of fun and the celebration of Andy turning thirty. How on earth did he manage to persuade me that this was a good idea?

  As I walk back out through the airport on my way to the roster office I notice that life is returning to the building. The WHSmith assistant must have found someone else to help because his newspapers are now all face out on their stands and he is managing the small queue that has already gathered at his till. Boots is open, and a powerful waft of caffeine tells me the guys from Costa’s have already got the cappuccino machine up and running. I keep an eye out for the Benedictine monks who sometimes stalk the terminal looking after the homeless and the distressed. Mostly they do the evening shift from about seven p.m. till one a.m. but sometimes you can see their black robes flowing about the place in the early hours.