Air Babylon Read online

  I walk past the arrivals gate and I can’t help smiling. There is always some prat dressed up in something to delight and amuse. It strikes me as odd that people think they need to put on a costume to meet their loved one off a long-haul flight. It’s just what you want when you get off a plane after a twenty-hour flight, to meet your family dressed as a bunch of kangaroos. There’s normally some granny being welcomed home with a homemade banner stuck on a couple of broom handles. Or a collection of drunks with corks swinging off their broad-brimmed hats. Today, there are two young blokes in cork hats, some old bloke dressed as the Statue of Liberty complete with crown and torch, and a young woman still in her pyjamas. I know it’s early, but you can’t help thinking she might have made the effort to get dressed, especially as those PJs have certainly seen better days. Who beyond the age of ten still sleeps in Snoopy nightwear?

  I finally arrive at the roster office, a large room not far away from the main concourse, next to a bureau de change, which we share with three other airlines. Walking in, you might be forgiven for thinking that you had entered maternity world, for every woman working in the roster office is up the duff. There are about twenty of them in here, all in various stages of pregnancy from the very slim to the huffing enormous. Some of them are so big you wonder how or why they came to work.

  It is airline policy that as soon as any flight attendant falls pregnant, she is grounded and found an admin job of some description. Not that there is any medical evidence that flying is bad for you, or at all dangerous for your unborn child, or so they say. But there were incidences of attendants miscarrying at five and six months. Common sense suggests that all you really need to do is consider how cabin pressure crushes an empty water bottle to understand what it might be doing to the womb. Plus the flight attendant unions are powerful negotiators. Anyway, the uniforms don’t contain enough Lycra to stretch over a bump. So what better place to put them than on rosters?

  Janet is one of the girls who does our rosters. She is blonde, model-pretty and six months pregnant. She used to fly long haul out of London, but since her affair with a married pilot ended in pregnancy and tears she has been grounded and he hasn’t had to see her in twenty weeks. Still, she seems to be remarkably stoical about the whole thing. Other girls would be in tears most of the time, but she apparently has a supportive mum who is only too thrilled that she is having a baby.

  ‘Oh, hiya,’ she says, as I come in. She always sounds a bit surprised.

  ‘You’re definitely showing these days,’ I say, for lack of anything else.

  ‘Oh, I know,’ she groans, stroking her stomach. ‘And I’ve got so much longer to go.’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ I nod.

  ‘Don’t say that,’ she says.

  ‘Oh, no,’ I quickly reply, shaking my head.

  ‘Anyway,’ she says.

  ‘Yes, right, well,’ I say. ‘I’m just here to check that you have both Andy and me on a double shift today.’

  ‘Right,’ she says, picking up a pen and clicking the end. ‘Both of you?’

  ‘Yes, both of us.’

  ‘On a double?

  ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘No, what?’

  ‘No I haven’t,’ she says.

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘I’ve just got you,’ she adds, flicking through her papers, licking the tip of her index finger as she does so.

  ‘Oh,’ I say again. ‘But you should have Andy as well.’

  ‘Right,’ she says. ‘Did he put it in writing?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t think he knew he had to.’

  ‘It’s the new rules,’ she says. ‘Since September eleventh—’

  ‘But September eleventh was years ago.’

  They’re always doing this, introducing new rules whenever they feel like it and then blaming them on 9/11. It drives the industry mad. The pilots hate being locked into their flight decks, not being able to speak to anyone other than their number two for hours at a time. The hosties, or hostesses, hate having to remember ridiculous passwords, like ‘mojo’, in order to speak to the pilots. The ground staff find the no-nail-scissors, no-nail-files rules ridiculous, especially as there are glass bottles on the plane and sharper plastic knives in the air than there are penknives on the ground. And the flight crew find it pointless silver-serving bread rolls and salmon en croute only to have the first-class passengers tuck in using plastic.

  And everyone finds the five-year security background check that we all have to go through these days in order to get an airside pass the most annoying thing of all. Not only was there a seven-month backlog when the new rule was introduced, despite the government claiming that it would only ever take six weeks, but now everyone, no matter how menial, has to be vetted. So, in order for Accessorize to employ a school leaver they have to write to their primary school to check they actually went there. Only last week I had to try to get a reference from a language school in China where one of my prospective employees worked during their year off. Anyone who’s chopped and changed a bit, had more than two jobs a year or moved about doesn’t get a look-in these days. Simple reason is, no-one can be arsed to check their employment records. Who wants to make thirteen phone calls when a couple will do? Talk to anyone who works in airport security and they’ll tell you that the whole thing is pointless anyway. Anyone who wants to put a bomb on a plane can put a bomb on a plane. The only reason we haven’t had another 9/11 in this country is because so far the terrorists have chosen not to.

  ‘Well, that’s what they said,’ Janet says.

  ‘When?’

  ‘At the meeting last week.’

  ‘So they actually mentioned nine-eleven?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nods. ‘That’s the reason.’

  ‘God.’ I exhale loudly. ‘So now we have to write everything down?’

  ‘Or have it approved by your supervisor.’

  ‘Well, I am Andy’s supervisor, and I am also your supervisor, and I approve it all.’

  ‘Do you?’ she says, her voice rising up an octave. ‘Well, that’s OK then.’ She writes Andy’s name down on the roster.

  ‘So that’s all OK now?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She nods. ‘Just so long as you say so.’

  ‘Well, I say so.’

  ‘Then it’s OK.’ She beams at me and leans towards a pack of biscuits. ‘Hobnob?’

  ‘No thanks.’ I smile. ‘You tuck in. You’re eating for two.’

  ‘Not these days you aren’t,’ she declares. ‘You’re not really supposed to put any weight on at all.’

  Fortunately, before I can be drawn any further into this fascinating conversation, my radio crackles into life. It’s Andy.

  ‘Mate,’ he says. ‘You there?’ He never uses the correct form of address.

  ‘Yup, um, roger,’ I reply down the receiver, as neither do I.

  ‘The zero-zero-five is about to land,’ he says.

  ‘Yup, I was on my way to the gate.’

  ‘Well, we’ve got a corpse,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, no. Roger that.’

  ‘No thanks,’ declares Andy.

  ‘Not funny,’ I say.

  ‘Yeah, well. Will you deal?’

  ‘Roger.’

  ‘Careful,’ he adds with a snigger, ‘I’ve informed all the right authorities.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘No worries,’ he replies. ‘See you over there.’

  I sigh as I put my radio back in my pocket. A corpse. That’s all I need at this hour of the morning.

  6–7 AM

  AS I APPROACH gate 56C, flight 005 is already docking. Being one of the more shitty airlines here at the airport, we’ve been allocated one of the more shitty gates. Airport gates are awarded on the basis of money and clout. The more the airline pays the BAA for landing rights at the airport, the more planes it has and the longer it’s been flying in and out of the airport, the better the gate. So a small-time, impoverished parvenu like us tends to get the gates at th
e far reaches of the terminal, far from the lounges, where our passengers are more likely to get lost, go missing and not make their flights. It is also a nightmare for the wheelies, or wheelchair users. Not only is it hard enough to find a bloody wheelchair in the airport these days, but to push them to this back-of-beyond gate is a job in itself. Fortunately, as far as I know, we’ve had no call for wheelchairs on this flight.

  I can see Andy is already on site and the ramp rats are attaching the finger – or, to put it more plainly, the blokes on the ground are hooking the plane up to the concertinaed end of the gate. This can cost precious seconds, and some of the low-cost airlines, namely Ryanair, who like to turn a plane around in forty minutes flat, choose to refrain from such customer luxuries as delivering passengers to the terminal. Hence most Ryanair flights dump you on the tarmac and make you walk the rest of the way, shaving whole minutes off their turnaround time.

  ‘Sorry I’m a bit late,’ I say when I finally reach Andy’s side. I am sweating and slightly out of breath, having jogged past the last three gates.

  ‘You’re not.’ He smiles, turning to face me. ‘And I see you’ve brought your own entourage with you.’

  I turn round to find a whole troop of policemen arriving in my wake. Shit, I think. What the hell is going on? We don’t normally have this many bobbies for a body. I’m the one supposed to be in charge here and I’m clearly not abreast of anything.

  ‘What are they here for?’ I whisper into Andy’s ear.

  ‘Fuck knows,’ he shrugs.

  ‘You’re no bloody help,’ I mutter. ‘Hi there,’ I say, striding confidently towards the group of twelve rapidly approaching policemen. ‘You all seem to be going somewhere in a hurry.’

  ‘We’re here for the incident,’ says the more senior-looking of the bunch.

  ‘Good,’ I say, nodding away, using my most assured, most in-the-know voice. ‘Very good. Um, there are quite a lot of you . . .’

  ‘Yes, well,’ sniffs the policeman, ‘the man was reported to be violent.’

  ‘He was?’

  ‘Yes,’ agrees Andy, with over-egged enthusiasm. He’s a terrible actor. ‘Quite violent indeed. Especially when he went for the, um, pilot . . .’ His voice peters out.

  ‘His wife, actually,’ corrects the policeman. ‘Quite a violent attack, or so I’m told. He’s been in handcuffs since Singapore. Or at least that’s the information we have from the captain when he radioed in this morning.’

  ‘Oh, that man!’ I say, rather weakly, convincing no-one. ‘This radio’s been on the blink all morning.’ I smile and pat the top pocket of my blue suit. ‘Never got the full story.’ I never got any story at all. I feel like a total prat and shall be speaking to the captain about it as soon as I see him.

  ‘Right,’ sniffs the copper, looking towards the door of the plane.

  Andy is clearly finding the whole situation hilarious. He is staring straight ahead, sucking on his cheeks and digging his right thumbnail into the flesh of his left hand. He always does this when he is trying to stop himself from laughing.

  ‘All right, you guys? Where’s the stiff?’

  I turn around and peer through the mêlée of policemen to see Terry and Derek, the ambulance guys, walking towards us. Dressed in yellow jackets and green boiler suits, they look like two elderly members of an eighties boy band. Both in their late forties, they’ve been working in the airport for as long as I can remember. Grey-haired, florid-skinned, with fast-food bellies; they have the gentlest of demeanours and the most cynical senses of humour. They’ve seen it all, dealt with it all and packed it all off home in a bandage.

  ‘It’s always you long-haul lot who ruin our day with a stiff,’ says Terry, the older and redder-faced of the two. ‘Not enough air, that’s my theory. You whack up the heating to twenty-six degrees to make the bastards fall asleep. Then you cut down the oxygen to save on fuel and you wonder why some of them cop it and the others end up kicking the shit out of one another.’

  ‘Morning, Terry,’ I say. ‘Lovely to have you with us.’

  ‘Morning, mate,’ he says, slapping me on the back. ‘So what have we got this time? A customer service director dead in the toilet?’

  Both he and Derek laugh. Andy pretends to look shocked.

  ‘You two,’ he says. ‘You’re all heart.’

  They might all snigger now, but at the time it was no laughing matter. A month ago one of our customer service directors died on a return flight from Thailand. It was a heart attack, apparently. The rest of the crew didn’t know what to do with the body. The plane was full and there were no seats available, so they shoved him into the toilet. What else were they supposed to do with him? Pop him on a jump seat in front of all the passengers? All was fine until the plane landed and we had to try to get the body out of the loo. Rigor mortis had set in and it was impossible to move him. Terry, Derek, Andy and I were in there for hours, tugging and pushing, back and forth. It was worse than trying to get a great big sofa into a small sitting room. Eventually we had to break down the toilet. We pulled the whole thing apart. It grounded the plane for a whole forty-eight hours. The airline wasn’t best pleased to say the least.

  But, you know, any death on a plane is a nightmare. For a start, what do you do with the body? Leave it there? Move it? Do you have anywhere to move it to? Does someone have to fly next to the corpse? Is the neighbour the dead person’s travelling companion? Wife? Daughter? Husband? Or do you put a blanket over the body and an oxygen mask on its face, pretend to the other passengers that they are just a bit under the weather and not, in fact, dead? Have they crapped themselves? Pissed on the seat? Everything comes out when you’re dead. It can be quite disgusting. We have to ground the plane and change the seat covers immediately after someone’s died. It’s not much fun.

  There are ways around it, though. I remember Andy telling me about a Filipino maid who died in economy on some continental airline only to be placed into a waterproof ski bag and filed on a seat in first class. Made the whole thing much easier. ‘It was the only way she was ever going to be up-graded,’ he said. ‘Poor old bird.’

  You’d be amazed how often it happens. Not upgrading corpses, but airline deaths. It’s not a rare occurrence at all. In fact, it is so common that Singapore Airlines have just introduced a corpse cupboard into their new extra-long seventeen-hour Singapore to Los Angeles route. Some say there are so many air deaths because it is so stressful negotiating your way through an airport that by the time you actually make it to the plane your body is ready to collapse. Others, like Terry, think that it’s the conditions on the plane itself – the lack of space and fresh air, combined with the cabin pressure – that lead to the number of heart attacks and embolisms we witness. Either that or there are so many elderly people doing long-haul ‘trips-of-a-lifetime’ to places like Australia when normally they barely get to the end of their street that some of them are bound to meet their maker before they touch down. Only the other day the BA208 from Miami had two deaths on the plane. The first was a grandmother who died of a heart attack, and the second was a man who more obscurely died of viral meningitis. Those seated next to him had to get written information on the virus before they were allowed to disembark.

  There’s a noise coming from inside the plane. It’s the sound of doors going to manual. Suddenly they open and a dark-haired, rather attractive flight attendant appears. It’s Shirley, who’s in her late twenties and has principally been doing the Sydney run for the last three years.

  ‘Morning, gentlemen,’ she says.

  We all take a step back as the fetid, foul air created by 378 people eating, breathing, farting, sweating and taking off their shoes escapes from the plane. The air is heavy and thick and the aroma is cloyingly stale. It’s hard to believe that all these people have survived the stench and so little oxygen. Some flights are obviously worse than others, depending on what the passengers have been eating and how long they’ve been cooped up together. Sometimes the smell of body odo
ur is so overpowering the last thing on earth you want to do is get on board. Fortunately for us, it’s the police who have to go in first.

  ‘He’s right at the front of economy,’ explains Shirley. ‘The captain’s on his way. He assaulted his wife and one of our members of staff. Slapped her across the face.’

  ‘Leave it to us, miss,’ says the senior officer. ‘Just point out the wife because we’ll need her to make a statement.’

  The senior officer and three attending officers all board the plane, the other eight stand around looking official and important. Andy and I wait our turn. It’s better to keep out of their way when it comes to arresting someone as there’s no telling what might happen. And anyway, our passenger is hardly going anywhere.

  No sooner do the police go through the door than some woman comes out. She has very short, very dyed blonde hair; she is wearing a denim mini skirt and a bright pink vest that matches the tanning stripes she has down both her shins. In her late thirties, she has the lines of a heavy smoker, the broken veins of a drinker and a red welt across her right cheek. She is being chased by Shirley.

  ‘Hang on a second, madam, wait there,’ she says.

  ‘You can all fuck off,’ yells the blonde as she strops towards us. ‘The whole fucking lot of you.’

  ‘There’s no need for that, madam,’ replies Shirley.

  The blonde is standing right next to me. I brace myself. In my experience, telling someone off for swearing only ever leads to more.

  ‘Don’t you fucking tell me what I can and I can’t fucking do,’ the blonde continues. ‘I’m on fucking land now. I’m nothing to do with you any more.’