The Glamour of Intercontinental Travel Clipped!

Pan Am (TV Series, S1, E1-14, 2011-12)
Come Fly With Me: The Story of Pan Am (2011, BBC Documentary)

There used to be a time when air travel was a novelty. People used to get all dressed up to the nines to start their journey. Nobody was stopped for being underdressed, as getting on a plane carried some dignity. Boarding a plane was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Only the deep-pocketed could travel, and the airlines made sure their clients were pampered to the brim.

The idea of having dinner in one place and breakfast in another time zone fascinated many a young aspirant that the fast, furious and restless applied for jobs to serve their clientele. In the service business, aesthetics and physical attributes were essential in selecting stewards and stewardesses. This, of course, was before the time body-shaming and diversity was even a term. Even though ferrying rich guys from points A to B is basically what a paid chauffeur would do, being a pilot brought so much dignity. Parents soon accepted it as an addition to the top four professional courses, i.e., medicine, law, architecture and accountancy, they wanted their kids to do. Of course, much science is involved in bringing a heap of metal across continents. Furthermore, an undesirable outcome for affluent customers may have disastrous consequences for the world economy or progress.

That was when stewardesses had all the time to chat with passengers to help them when needed. Of course, there was a natural selection of travellers. Remember, not everyone could fly then.

Talking about 'everyone can fly', the famous tagline of Asia's biggest budget airlines, the democratisation of the air space also opened up the job of flight stewards (later rehashed a lesser important sounding flight attendant) to less stringent criteria. Anyone could fly as a crew.

Pan Am ruled the airspace at a time when planes were small and propeller-driven. Even when jet engines made flying easier as bigger planes could be built, less fuel was consumed, and with fewer stops, Pan Am was the unofficial carrier of the USA. Its staff were the benchmark of how training should be done. Their ticketing model and computation were followed the world over. The persona of a  flight pilot, steward and stewardess became a yardstick for other airlines to emulate. 

Starting as a getaway route to escape the effects of Prohibition in the 1930s, Pan Am prospered by using boat planes from Florida to Cuba. Wealthy people could fly to Cuba over the weekend for their alcohol fix. Slowly, aeronautical technology improved by leaps and bounds during the World Wars. After WW2, jet engines became the preferred method of flying.

Pan Am ruled the skies, and its icon logo spoke volumes of its branding. Everyone found pride in carrying the marine blue Pan Am bag. Many knock-offs sprang up in third-world countries like Malaysia, and many of my friends in school used them as school bags.

Behind the squeaky clean image of the airline, there is a darker side. The Americans had used its vessels to clandestinely spy on other nations. In 1962, just before the Bay of Pig invasion, its plane rescued many American spies from Cuba. Back then, the picture of a line of air stewardesses walking poise past the sea of travellers in the airport, leaving a trail of a whiff of perfume, was deemed empowering. It was customary to impose stringent weight quotas and restrictions upon marriage and child-bearing to continue working.

Pan Am's golden age ended with the easing of flight regulations. The 1970s energy crisis contributed to it. Restricting operations after the reign of Juan Trippe, where they concentrated on US domestic flights, proved disastrous. The last biggest news that came before their bust was the fatal bombing of the vessel in Lockerbie by Libyan terrorists in 1988. By 1991, they were bankrupt.

Boeing B-314

The pinnacle of flying boat technology in the 1930s. 

Pan Am chief Juan Trippe continued using the term 'Clipper' for its airplanes 

to link his airline with the maritime heritage of the world's great ocean liners. 

The planes could land and take off at any harbour, no airfield needed.

 

Boeing 314 Dining Room

The Pan Am TV series was very successful in recreating the innocent age of baby boomers. After putting the evils of the Second World War behind them, the world was single-hearted in taking leaps and bounds in science and technology. The subversive elements of the world had not resorted to hijacking an aeroplane to make a political statement. The cockpit need not be securely bolted from the inside. And taking pictures in the pilot's sea was cool and inspired many wannabe pilots. Now, the crew has to defend themselves for indiscipline. A cockpit is a volatile area and a restricted zone at that. Every entree into the plane, or for that matter, every passenger, is now viewed as a potential suicide bomber. A shoe is not just a shoe but needs to be examined for explosives. It was perfectly normal then to recite a prayer loudly in the cabin if you were anxious about flying. Try reciting anything in Arabic now! You can no longer call your old friend, Jack, 'Hi Jack' without the air marshalls tasering you down. 

The hierarchical order in command in full force can be seen here in this era. The Captain takes full charge, and everybody else is beneath him. As time passed, we realised that this same attitude brought down many planes in many instances afterwards. Pilot error was apparent in many crashes to everyone except the airline pilot, but the co-pilot and the rest of the crew were too timid to voice out. Repeated flight crash reports highlighted this fact later. 

Unfortunately, the TV series only lasted one season. Business wrangling between studios made making the second season difficult. 

I remember my Parasitology professor telling the class that more people die of malaria than from jumbo jets crashing. But obviously, the hype of the news of a jetplane crashing draws such attention that so much money and research is invested in making air travel safe. Unfortunately, malaria, being the curse of the poor, remains unfunded. 

During my last travels, after watching Pan Am, the series, my twisted mind went wondering yet again. At one time, it was the crew's duty to guard their passengers at all cost, with idioms like the Captain would go down with the ship and all as Captain Edward Smith did with the Titanic. Now, it is like they herding a herd of cattle, ensuring the pack reaches the marketplace akin to how Uncle Buck and his jolly men would herd their cattle from High Chaparral to Tuscon, Arizona. They want to spare the embarrassment of explaining their whereabouts to Big John Cannon. 

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Air sick...

It was a necessary trip, not a pleasure cruise. It needed to be done. 

Just as the restrictions that kept us within our borders were eased, I made a dash for it. I thought everyone would be excited to fly free as a bird all over again - the passengers would be thrilled to meet with their loved ones overseas, and the flight crew with the licence to serve in the airspace, ecstatic to scale the skies.

How wrong I was! 

The powers that be probably decided to take an excellent last squeeze on travellers one more time, one for the road, before the scare of Covid dwindled away. Out of the blue (not mentioned in any pre-travel requisites), recipients of Sinovac vaccines needed to provide a negative report of their nasal swab for virus detection (PCR-Ag). New directives, it seems. When travellers expressed their dissatisfaction, the staff reassured them that they just happened to have a state-of-the-art laboratory at the airport, by the way, and results could be obtained within two hours, just in time for them to board their flights. How convenient! But the catch was that it cost RM500 when it was done for RM200 outside. Hey, if you could afford a flight ticket...

In my eyes, the flight crew did not display much enthusiasm for their newfound freedom. Maybe it was because they were scheduled on a 'graveyard route' - a route allocated to newbies, as a punishment or demotion, a trip to the Gulag. The flight (KUL-DEL) with the most number of unsettled passengers who are never satisfied and undeservedly feel flight attendants are like slaves on Captain Morgan's pirate ship, fit to be abused. To an outsider, the scene looked like a group of primary school teachers controlling many boisterous students - teachers running away, appearing busy and school whining, asking for this and that.

I remember my first international flight on MAS. Their tagline, service with a smile, was complemented with the secret to capturing a man's heart. I was puffed with a full meal, periodic snacks and free-flowing beverages. No thanks to the democratisation of air travel with the invasion of budget airlines, the flight menu on this regular flight too had been 'plebeianised'! Passing off shrivelled dehydrated chicken pieces for rendang is criminal. And a cake piece which looked like one obtained from a bread vendor? 

The return trip was no better. Two hours of delay in flight take-off but a single breath of apology, but instead, the pilot gave a lethargic description of his flight path and altitude… 33,000 ft above Visakapatnam etc. No one word remotely resembling sorry, delay or beyond control in his wasteful banter. No one was bothered that the passengers may miss their connecting flights or other pressing engagement. Oh, what the heck? They are performing a charity mission...

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

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Now, everyone can fly (the plane)!

The tagline 'Now everyone can fly' must be the most overused, ridiculed and abused business tagline ever in Malaysia. Now only every Tom, Dick and Harry can fly, and Jane and Mary be stewardesses; the news on a podcast recently convinced me that even any Ahmad, Ah Chong and Samy can fly a plane!
You see, there was an analysis of the ill-fated Air France 447 from Rio de Janeiro to Paris. As we all know, it went down, and it took 2 years for its wreckage and flight decoder to be found and analysed.

My untrained aeronautically challenged mind interpreted the simplistic turns of events as such...

The plane, an Airbus, was cruising on autopilot at 37,000 feet over the Atlantic Ocean. It was manned by 2 co-pilots after the captain retired to take a nap as the going was easy. There was a minor storm, noting alarming, but it caused a little frosting over one of the wings. That is when all hell broke loose. Airbus has an automatic system called 'fly-by-wire'. It is supposed to aid manoeuvring, but it decided to take charge. It could not be overwritten. The plane stalled without the knowledge of the co-pilots. The captain who arrived at the scene, puzzled by the state of affairs, took the mistaken step of plunging downwards and accelerating towards the ocean floor.

Investigators who analysed the chain of events cautioned that perhaps flying was too much automated. Admittedly, that automation was initiated to easing flying and rectify inadvertent errors. Over time, it appears as though that autopilot seems to be doing all the piloting proper. Apparently, a pilot who clocks 300 hours of flying only does 4-6 hours of actual flying. Otherwise, he is just setting the flight plans and punching in data. Hence, there is a dearth of physical flying as in the old days. And there is no reason for an engineer to be onboard anymore as computers can do that! There is only so much simulated flights can do.

Whatever is said and done, automation is here to stay. In fact, in the not so near future, we may see pilotless planes. Despite the bad reputation that surrounds the airline industry today, the incidence of an air crash is only 2.8 per a million flight take-off! It is still safe, and everyone can fly from point A to point B with peace of mind.

Correct gauge of happiness?

Dambulla Golden Temple

They say they had great powers and wisdom. Legend has it that one of their kings, Ravana, had literally brought Lord Shiva to his knees when the king had conquered the Indian subcontinent all the way to what they thought was edge of heaven - Mount Kailash. Only when the mighty Lord thumbed his big guy did he plead for clemency and hence was born the Shiva Thandava stotram which is still muttered by His devotees till today.

The island has so much of history and feats in engineering and architecture but what has it become? A third world country with chaotic traffic system filled by traffic etiquette wanting horn blaring drivers and three wheeler 'tut-tut' taxis who treat the road as a war zone where only the fittest and lion hearted survives!

A nation with such a long high culture is now wallowed in poverty and has to
play dance monkey to the tunes of tourists from supposedly developed nation to conjure out foreign exchange for their livelihood.

King of the Road?

Perhaps we are all looking at contentment of life all wrong. Their meaning and purpose of life which sustained their existence all these while took a turn at turn of the late 19th century with the new world order in global economics. Suddenly all their social equilibrium crumpled and could not keep up with the demand of the new world needs. Maybe their definition of bliss is far different from the 'modern' world.
Of course every now and then, a dynamic leader would spring from nowhere and take the nation to great heights and Sri Lanka too had their time in the limelight.

Even though Sri Lanka got a free hand to run their own affairs from their colonial masters almost a decade before Malaysia, the economic distribution seem patchy. Even tourists spots with drones of visitors with tourists dollars fail to show proportionate aesthestic change. In this religious land which encourages moderation in daily life, this kind of encouragement is just nice but what happens to the coffers is another question! You do not want too much of commercialisation, do you?
If you had a nation brimming with money worshipping individuals, they would monetise anything and everything worth or not worth showcasing to the world to propagate more economic activity.

Joy to fishes in the sea

     

    Negambo Hindu Temple;    Sigiriya Lion Cave;        Massive monolith;             Dutch canal

Say a little prayer...

You cannot fault me for thinking that when I am air bound, I am just a particle in the sky away the scrutiny of eyes of people who were supposed to be on a lookout for my welfare. From a person whose knowledge of projectile does not go beyond the problems I have solved in Mechanical Mathematics and understanding projectile vomiting, I cannot be faulted to think that if anything were to go wrong in stratosphere, I would be literally on a free fall. Nobody would know where I am and where to look for me.
It is not paranoia or some kind of phobia of flying that drove me to think so.
10  months ago, our plane went missing and till date no one has a clue where it went, where to look for it and what came out the billions spent looking for it.
And more recently, another one went missing. They had all the communication records and flight path at their disposal and yet 2 weeks into its disappearance, they are unable to put a closure to the mishap.
So, when you are up there, you are really on your own. Nobody has a clue where you are and what to do in case something goes wrong. Time spent listening to flight safety instructions can be better spent praying. That is, if anyone out there is even listening... What else can you do but hope?

He thought he ruled the skies!

Above us only sky?

"Why is it that people get all emotional when a plane goes down in its line of duty?" complained a friend after viewing umpteen posts of the downing of a plane involving 166 and  hardly anything on the massive floods that submerged almost the whole of the east coast of the peninsular, affecting close to 200,000 people of all strata and tears that would fall after the aftermath.
Is it because traditionally flying involved people who are important performing jobs which would literally alter the course of mankind? Perhaps, it does not hold water anymore, since, now everyone can fly! The glitz of flying as being the domain of the rich and famous was relevant in mid 20th century.
Is that the reason so much of resources is spent on its search and rescue missions?
I tend to think that perhaps, man's ability to fly is one giant step in their civilisation. Being a biped, walking on land, ability to fly off the ground with no physical contact with Mother Gaia is a feather in his cap (pun unintended) and giant step in advancement. He, through generations, was fascinated with  the wing spanning feathered animals. He had tried disastrously to mimic them in many laughable and ridiculously failed manoeuvres.
Not being the one to succumb to the pressures of the forces of Nature, he constantly assesses and revises the shortfalls in his inventions to attain perfection.
So, when his dear invention meets failure, he naturally feels defeated and wants to get to the bottom of the matter!
P/S: Looking at the turn events of aviation mishaps of late, it appear that the passengers are actually travelling at the mercy of element of chance. Nobody actually seem to know exactly what is happening on air and where actually is the air craft. When all hell break, these deficiencies surface.