I REMEMBER it all like it happened only yesterday. I was in the late-1990s and I was strapped into a Fiesta Class seat on a half-empty Philippine Airlines evening flight to Manila, after spending an extended period in North California, farther upward of San Francisco, with the romantic love of my life.
It was the tail-end of the holiday season.
As the plane readied to taxi off, I could feel the tears stinging my eyes and, inevitably, they rolled down, streaking my cheeks. The tears were uncontrollable, I was inconsolable, and I found myself quietly gasping as I tried, with very little success, to suppress my sobs from echoing throughout the plane, my chest heaving from the effort. I found only a modicum of relief that I was seated near the back of the half-empty flight, with nobody to witness my grief as I, so the song goes, “left my heart in San Francisco”.
“Are you alright?” a voice asked as I was in mid-sob. It was a flight attendant, a Filipina of course, and there wasn’t a smidgen of annoyance in her voice over this disruption prior to takeoff. There was only genuine concern—and empathy.
The memory of this embarrassingly melodramatic episode returned to me in the wake of twin incidents involving the airline industry. One involved a passenger, David Dao, an Asian American, who on April 9 was bloodily dragged off a United Airlines flight bound from Chicago to Kentucky, this, after Mr. Dao refused to be bumped off to make way for airline employees. The other incident happened a couple of weeks after the United controversy, this time involving a sobbing mother with two children, an angry staff of American Airlines, and another passenger who came to the mother’s defense. Both contretemps were captured on video.
It’s tempting to dismiss this unfortunate state of travel affairs as one peculiar only to American/European carriers, but that would not only be racist but also wrong. YouTube has become an ugly repository of videos of such unnerving airline incidents, and not a few of these involve carriers from other regions, as well.
Similarly, it’s tempting to attribute the rise of such altercations to an airline crew having become emboldened, even arrogant, since the 9/11 terror attacks gave airline employees “positions of extreme power and authority”, as Gary Leff, author of the travel blog Viewfromthewing.com, said in a New York Times story by Elaine Glusac (“In the Air, That Uneasy Feeling of Us vs Them”, BusinessMirror, May 3). That, however, would deny the reality of airline passengers behaving very badly, many examples of which are also readily available for viewing on YouTube.
“Come fly with me/Let’s fly, let’s fly away/Pack up, let’s fly away!” sings Frank Sinatra in a vintage promotional video of the US airline industry. These days, however, it’s hard to share Mr. Sinatra’s enthusiasm about flying.
Only a week ago, on my red-eye flight back to Manila from Nagoya on value carrier JetStar, which hosted a five-day tour of that beautiful capital of the Aichi Prefecture in Japan, in the row across mine was a little girl crying and screaming her head off, and a father apparently incapable of calming his daughter. To be fair, the father did try to quiet his daughter, by turns seeking to soothe the distressed child with gentle reassurances and, when that didn’t work, speaking sternly to hush down, which made the little girl scream and cry even more.
This went on and on for a couple of minutes or three—until the mother, who was seated in the row just in front of the distressed father and daughter, switched places with her husband and quickly and efficiently calmed their daughter down.
Oh dear.
According to news reports, Mr. Dao, the bloodied United passenger, has since agreed to a settlement with the carrier prior to its testimony in a congressional inquiry on air travel scheduled next week. Besides the settlement, the airline has reportedly instituted changes on bumping-off passengers. There remains to be no update with regards to the tearful mother on the American Airlines.
“I’m OK, thank you,” I replied to the Philippine Airlines flight attendant, as I wiped my tear-stained face with my hand, my smile weak. “I just never thought San Francisco could do this to me.”
“I know,” she said, giving me a smile that was full of empathy before walking away to fetch me a cup of cold water. “It’ll be alright,” she said after handing me the cup. “I can give you a blanket later if you like. Just tell me if there’s anything else you need, you poor thing.” ✚
