Fliers taken for a ride?

oneworldvirtual.org/fleet/models/malaysia-airlines-boeing-737-8h6wl

Fliers in Malaysia are treated like flies. They are taken for granted, akin to how flies are viewed in the wet market—an accepted but necessary annoyance. Since the emergence of low-cost carriers and the widespread use of the internet for bookings, travelling has never been easier. 

Once the enticement concludes with super saver offers and the fabricated excitement that seats are selling out quickly, and once the transactions are finalised, the ball will be in the airlines' court. They have the freedom to postpone, cancel, and reschedule any trip to meet their business requirements, ensuring maximum returns. Multiple flights can be consolidated into a single journey if there are few passengers on a specific route. They do not owe their customers any explanation. In fact, contacting them is made nearly impossible. If customers persist, they can be redirected to chatbots, but only after verifying that the customers are indeed human. Humans must also pass the Turing test. The irony is that now machines are confirming humans to be humans!

Airlines may conceal behind the pretext of technical reasons, which can vary from a pilot failing to arrive for duty to a missing jet engine. 

It was a long weekend filled with wedding invitations, one or two at a time, back to back. Amidst this, a dear friend succumbed to a heart attack, making the weekend resemble a scene from 'Four Weddings and A Funeral', though with less masala.

I had booked a flight to Johor Bahru for 2:40 pm on a Friday. I thought there would be just enough time to finish off work and rush to the airport.

 

A few days before the flight, an email arrived informing me that the flight would be delayed by an hour, to 3:40 pm. This was fine, as the wedding was scheduled to start at 7 pm. It provided ample time to settle in and join the merriment. 

Once again, a day before the journey, there is another announcement. The plane now takes off an hour later, at 4:35 pm. How convenient. Of course, they offered a refund if the change was unacceptable, but one can only imagine the inconveniences and extra costs incurred if a new order is placed relatively close to the departure date. The airline can obscure their responsibilities under the often unread contract that customers must agree to before purchasing their tickets - it is the prerogative of the airline to delay, postpone, or even cancel the flight. 

Anyway, I made the trip in time for the function.

 

My return flight was scheduled for the following morning, the first one out at 6:30 am. If leaving early and rushing to the airport at an unearthly hour to arrive before the stipulated time was not enough, imagine how frustrating it is when the flight is delayed. Why was there a delay when the airport was clear, the weather was fine, and the plane was just starting its journey for the day? It's anybody's guess—no announcement and, obviously, no apologies. 

The reason people prefer air travel over driving in Malaysia, which boasts an extensive highway network admired globally, is the convenience it offers. The unpredictability of traffic conditions makes driving burdensome, especially for short trips. Although the travel time is comparable in both scenarios, the freshness factor becomes a significant consideration. The time needed to reach the airport, check in two hours before departure, and wait will be similar if one were to drive to the equivalent destination on the west coast of Peninsula Malaysia.

 

It appears that Malaysians are being taken for fools. They find themselves at the mercy of these operators, be they local budget carriers or regular airlines. There may be a need for assertive customers with a mob mentality, rather than the compliant, submissive ones they typically encounter here.

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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...

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Follow

Complications when the dead returns!

Manifest (Seasons 1-3; 2018 - 2021)

What happens when a flight disappears from the radar one day and lands at its destination some five and a half years later? A whole lot of questions naturally crops up. Tonnes of conspiracy theories spring from nothing, and the governmental agencies will jump into action trying to put a plausible validation to the whole speculation. The most unsettling part of the entire fiasco would be the relatives, who, after months if not years of trying to get over the presumed death of their loved one and putting their past behind. Imagine trying to place them back in their new lives!

The puzzling (maybe not if one understands time travel) is that the plane passengers did not age a day older, even five years later, further complicating the hullabaloo. One twin was stuck as a preteen in this miniseries, while the other blossomed into the hormone-raged teenager. On a happy note, the preteen was sick with cancer when he started, but afterwards, he had five years of medical advancement to fight cancer.

This addictive miniseries tries to explain the sudden disappearance of a commercial flight from Jamaica to New York. As the passenger are all connected with flashes of vision that coax them, especially the protagonist, Michaela Stone; an NYPD cop, her brother, a mathematics professor; his son and occasionally others as well, they try to prevent wrongdoings. Hot on their trails is NSA and the US Army to exploit their powers. 

After three seasons on NBC, its popularity waned, but it started a cult following after screening on Netflix. Works on the fourth season are in progress.

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Nothing personal, it's just for the nation.

Tun M tried it once, and now in his second lease of life, he is at it again - wanting to change our mindset to be tuned to the frequency of the Japanese. Their zest for improvement and perfection cannonballed them up from a nation devastated by the pulverising effects of a mushroom cloud to morph into the second biggest economy in thirty short years.

Somehow, we are deeply immersed and soaked in our mediocrity and lulled with self-glorification that even if we look at the Land of Rising Sun with awe, we remain faithfully as the Land of Twilight. For it is at the twilight of times, do we all become lethargic.

Gandhi, among the many things that he admired about the Europeans, includes cleanliness and punctuality. He went as far as to say that stickling to time made them able to rules countries timezones away (paraphrasing).
One of the virtues that skyrocketed the Japanese to great heights in discipline and keeping time. Go to any railway station and one can understand. A minute in the arrival of their train is a national crisis. Trains come on time at the dot of a second.

We, Malaysians, shamefully prescribe to the dictum, 'better late than sorry' but with a twist. We are late, we say sorry profusely but mean not a single word of it, and we would do it again without an iota of guilt. We do not bat an eyelid when we are stood up because we do the same. We apologise and a new slate. Queserasera.

Should it also be happening at a public domain level? Go to any bus or even no-frill airport terminal? One should think that, at least in the aviation industry, with their association with multinational concerns, some of the traits of timeliness would have trickled down. But hell no. I guess the lackadaisical Asiatic outlook and the humid tropical lethargy overpowers the desire to be prompt.

Try flying Firefly or Malindo from Subang (SZB) like I sometimes have to do for short trips. I think I may have some authority of sorts to vouch for their laggard performance on the punctuality department. Passengers would soon realise that the joke in on them after weaving and needling through the streets of KL to reach the airport just to be informed that their flight has been delayed. (Reasons: Pick your choice, as if anybody can fact-check; non-arrival of the shuttling planes from the other side, technical problems, inclement weather and the latest I heard is: a traffic jam in the KL skies!) You will end up arriving too early after all, for the umpteenth time.

More flights tend not to fly on time. No amount of profuse regrets is going to improve the hospitality. Both sides know it just lip service, mere little pacifiers. The apologies do not reflect the service providers' genuine inadvertent lapse in exemplar spotless work record but their inefficiencies. We all well versed with the Malay 'bangsawan' movie dialogue that goes, "beribu-ribu ampun, sembah patik harap diampun..." And we know they say it as a matter of figure of speech to think of an excuse to their undoing.

Have pride in your work. If you find it too complicated, perhaps you could leave it to others to manage. At this juncture, Peter's Principle comes to mind. In a hierarchy, people tend to rise to "their level of incompetence." Thus, as people are promoted, they become progressively less-effective because good performance in one job does not guarantee similar performance in another. In Malaysia, we also have a term. It is called 'jagoh kampong'.

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."  Arjuna, upon being shown the power of the Vishnu (Vishwaroop) in its full glory, is told by Krishna, "kalo'smi loka-ksaya-krt pravrddho" [Thou seest Me as Time who kills, Time who brings all to doom]. Is the scripture telling time is the One which controls the worlds? Hence, God is Time and Time is God. 

 https://asok22.wixsite.com/real-lesson 

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Post #2000

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.

Blame, shame, name game

The question is whether an occurrence can solely be put on one event is questionable. It appears that our national pastime is playing the blame game and to shame the alleged perpetrator(s) in the hope that if someone can be pinpointed to have caused the gaffe, we can put closure to a catastrophe. And they hope to prevent the shortcomings in future.

It all sounds noble but unfortunately life is not so simple.

Not every bad incident has a simple etiology. Most often than not it is multi factorial. Like in Murphy's Law, when something is doomed to go wrong, it will go wrong. Airline industry have considered a 'no blame' policy but to identify the precipitating events and to take a collective approach to improve safety.
On the other hand, is a leader culpable to take the brickbats if his subordinates faltered? Should he be made to answer or just take the easy way of saying, "it wasn't me. It is not easy to control so many people's actions, you know!"?

That reminds me of a small civil court case where a minor road accident had occurred. A driver coming from the opposite side had hit him at a traffic light. The aggrieved driver insisted that he was right as the traffic light on his side was green. The learned judge decreed that he also had to take 20% of the blame as it was his duty too to ensure that his lane was clear before he started moving!

Of frills and thrills...

Wanting to stay away from hassle and bustle of modern living, I managed to escape for a short getaway! As it was a last minute after thought, I had to settle for a regular ticket from a regular airline as all the tickets from the no-frill ones were either taken up or the their websites were too darn user un-friendly! Guess everyone wanted to fly away to greener pastures just because everyone can fly.

As it had been a mighty long time since I flew in a national airline, it was an eye opener on what most people have been missing.

Somehow, from the time of its inception, a journey on a plane has been associated with bourgeois living. People got dressed to the nines. Fair maiden fall all over and bend over backwards to serve the passengers. Servings on flight had to be first class and exquisite and comfort is of paramount importance. All that changed with young punks who came out thinking out of the box and forever changed the experience amongst the clouds. "We make it cheap for you", they said. "You pay for what you want." Preferred seating, extra leg space, express check-in, personalised notification, insurance, food on-flight etcetera were only charged upon request. Luckily, emergency life saving equipment were not charged, or were they?

After being ushered into our seats with salutations of 'Ayubowan', we were left to enjoy the comforts of air travel interrupted periodically by the in-flights announcements of take off and safety precautions. We were spared of having to give the pathetic look at the equally bored air stewardesses on most flights with their acrobatic manoeuvres on life safety tips in case of a crash. Anyway, most people watch it out of pity than really curious to know! All public service announcements were screened on our personalised monitors.

After a short stop for food, we were left to meddle with our flight electronic devices before our arrival without much hassle. No confusion over pre-booked meals, shortage of meals, passengers ordering at last minute, requesting for menu, requesting for unheard dish, selling of duty-free items and passengers treating the flight attendants as their personal maids! Not everyone wants to fly like that! Or is that what happens when everyone can fly? I rather not be thrilled by no-frills next time!

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?