Flights from Hell
Maheen Rizvi: As someone who has no fear when it comes to flying, the concept of a ‘bad flight’ has always seemed an objective one; an unpleasant time for those who fear heights or suffer from travel sickness. Nothing that was ever any worry for me.
This arrogance was to be my own hubris, and the karma I shall accept. This karma was to be in the form of an hour-long flight from Kenya to Tanzania. What seemed to be a harmless journey turned out to be one of the most traumatic experiences of my adolescence. The second I boarded the plane, the feeling of claustrophobia was unavoidable, as it was the thinnest plane I’ve ever seen; it could barely contain thirty people.
you haven’t faced adversity until you have tried to translate Swahili from a phrasebook through an oxygen mask…
After the most painful take-off known to man, I gritted my teeth through the Mentos and the turbulence, counting down the minutes, praying for the plane to land. Ten minutes before landing, the oxygen masks fell down. The pilot declared on the intercom that it was a technical error and that there’s nothing to worry about… in Swahili… with no English translation. I thought I knew what hardship was, but I now know that you haven’t faced adversity until you have tried to translate Swahili from a phrasebook through an oxygen mask.
The five minutes of screaming, crying, praying, along with the turbulence that was enough to make anyone feel sick was the worst five minutes I have ever experienced. Did it make me stronger? Probably not. Did it give me an amusing anecdote that lets me brag to people that I went to Tanzania without sounding pretentious? Probably not, ‘cause I possibly still sound pretentious. Yet it’s still a funny story nonetheless.
A few hours prior to this, my mum had decided to buy a thin wooden Nepali mask which wouldn’t fit into our suitcase. Instead of leaving it behind, she thought it would be a great idea to bring it with us on the plane in her backpack. The backpack wouldn’t close, and so she had half of the mask sticking out above the back of her head.
However, upon entering the plane, she was told – by a very mean flight attendant– that she had to remove the backpack as she wouldn’t fit in the plane otherwise. To do so, my mother removed one strap off her shoulder and started swinging the bag over. And that’s when the mask hit a passenger on the head.
The same air hostess came up to us once again and screamed at us for endangering someone’s life…
This passenger started crying. The passenger, a woman who seemed to be in her mid-twenties, started bawling and pointing at her head as if it were bleeding –which it obviously wasn’t. So naturally, my mum started laughing. The same air hostess came up to us once again and screamed at us for endangering someone’s life, and threatened to kick us out.
Since we were almost the last people to board, almost all of the passengers had turned to look at us. I felt like I was in a zoo, since I had never seen such an unequal distribution of men and women before in my entire life. Getting to my (cramped) seat, I couldn’t help but wonder if that was the worst flight of my life, or the best. You be the judge.
[dropcap]A[/dropcap]nonymous: When flying back to London from San Francisco, a young boy in front of me started to have fits of rage just as we were about to take off.
He was lashing out and screaming while his mother was trying to calm him down. This in itself was not the worst experience. It manifested that the boy suffered from learning difficulties and was very anxious before flying, and although he was delaying the flight, his mother and the cabin crew were doing what they could to calm the situation.
Unfortunately, an American couple stood up and declared in front of everyone that they were “speaking on behalf of the whole flight” and that they “didn’t feel safe with this child on board”. They then demanded that he be removed immediately.
There was nearly even a physical fight at one point which involved another passenger…
I was shocked by the couple’s lack of compassion, and also the fact that they felt they had the right to speak on my behalf when we had never so much as said two words to each other. The child and his mother were forced to leave the flight but it left a very uncomfortable atmosphere for the next eleven hours, especially as an argument broke out between the couple and the rest of the plane.
There was nearly even a physical fight at one point which involved another passenger and the couple, at which I declared I “didn’t feel safe with them of board” and asked for their removal instead. Usually bad fight experiences are related to delays, turbulence and lost baggage, however, this was a totally different experience that sadly left me questioning my faith in humanity.
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