Scenes from airports
Assorted shenanigans involving author and civil aviation
(Disclaimer: A few days ago as I was drafting a little post for ye olde blog—est. 2001–I suddenly wondered if I had written about the topic previously. Had I blogged about this at some point in the last 20 years? Maybe I had tweeted about it? Surely I would be letting down readers if I was milking content from the same teat, so to speak.
And it turned out I had written a post about the incident in 2015! The post was shelved.
But then I decided that this was thinking too much. I had enough hurdles that threatened to derail my blogging. Let’s not add a new one. Especially one so old-fashioned as ‘originality’. Pfft. So henceforth if you feel like I am telling you a story I already have, well just please adjust.)
Travelling to Seville this week for a short trip. And I would like to present a few scenes from an airport. Actually from more than one airport. So more like scenes from airports.
On the concourse from the Gatwick duty-free to the gate an unhappy child of 5 or 6 has just punched his mother in the face. And the mother has just retaliated with an absolutely full-bodied slap across the child’s face. And now both have hugged and settled into a truce.
At one of the coffee shops there is a very large group of friends. Young men on a stag party I suspect. When groups are very large they lose a center of gravity. So they fragment into smaller groups. And usually they fragment along thematic lines: the talkative faction, the posh faction, the womanizer faction, and, perhaps worst of all, the current affairs faction.
Here in the coffee shop there is a current affairs faction. And each member is trying to impress the others with general knowledge. It is unbearable. Imagine a state in India that was only composed of Kannada and Bengali college-level quizzers.
The very thought makes the skin crawl and the heart palpitate.
When I was in pre-university I was once flying back from Abu Dhabi to Kochi. On a Gulf Air flight. After summer vacations. When my dad and I arrived at the check-in counter they informed us that the flight was overbooked.
If I were willing to be booked on the next flight, they would give me 100 of the UAE’s finest Dirhams as compensation.
My dad, much like your dad, is a big fan of free money. He immediately said yes, we pocketed the money, and then I went and sat in a cafe nearby for a couple of hours before checking-in again.
Then I got to the Emigration Counter. Which, back in those days, always had a very intimidating man staffing it. He looked at my passport, frowned, and then asked me to accompany him to his manager’s cabin.
Friends, “please come to the manager’s cabin” is one of the scariest things anyone in an airport can tell you. My pants were in very imminent danger of turning from blue into brown.
Off I went. I sat in a chair in the corner. The men conferred with each other for a few minutes. And then the manager asked me to walk over.
“You have overstayed your visa. You have to pay a fine.”
Friends, you will enjoy this.
So my father had procured a visit visa for me that ended, exactly the same day as my return flight to India. And my return flight was late at night. But in choosing to take the later flight, in lieu of compensation, I had inadvertently stayed past midnight. The clock ticked over. And now I had overstayed my visit visa by exactly one day.
And what was the fine for overstaying on a visit visa back in those days?
Correct. 100 Dirhams per day.
So I handed over the very same 100 Dirhams that Gulf Air gave me. And I eventually landed in Kochi, several hours later than planned, with absolutely no extra liquidity.
Gatwick airport seems to have much better restaurants now. With actual menus, and healthy choices, and customer service, and decent coffee. What is more, they now have boards outside the restaurants telling you how long the kitchen is currently taking to send out orders.
I had some sort of Moroccan breakfast. Sweet potato, flat bread, sour cream, spicy hummus, a poached egg, guacamole. Very obviously everything was pre-prepared and assembled to order.
But it was quite good.
Cultural generalizations ahead.
Broadly, in the West, there is a fascination with all-day breakfast. People are weirdly excited about eating Breakfast throughout the day.
Indian airports are the opposite. People seem to want eat dinner always. Especially early in the mornings. I remember I was at an Indian airport (Delhi?) a few months ago. And the longest lines were not at the X-ray, the security or any such, but at the KFC. Lots of people were demolishing buckets full of fried chicken. It was 4am.
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You know what is the ideal airport beverage?
Zero-percent beer. Naughty. But nice.
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In late 2019, not long before COVID, I flew from Mumbai to London via Delhi.
Everything proceeded in a satisfactory fashion. Until it was time to line up at the gate for my Etihad flight to London. Suddenly I realized I couldn’t find my UK Visa Biometric Card thing. I couldn’t find it anywhere. And the staff were very clear I could not board unless I found it.
I looked everywhere. I retraced my steps all over the airport. Including the toilets and the duty free shops and the cafe.
And I could not find my Card. So they held the flight back, and offloaded my luggage. Then the flight left without me.
Literally five minutes later I found the Card. It was in the dustbin next to the gate. One of the cleaners had absent-mindedly swept some garbage on the floor, including the Card, and tipped it into the bin. It was not my idea to look in the bin. I think one of the Etihad staff told me to check.
It was all very embarrassing. And what was worse is that the Etihad staff were extremely annoyed and kept complaining about me. But in Malayalam. Because they didn’t know I was one of them. It was so embarrassing guys.
“This is the kind of guy who is an international embarrassment to Indians…”
Et cetera. Cringe.
Anyway. So now I had to beg Etihad to book me on another flight at minimal cost. They said fine. Just call this number. It is our call center in Belgrade. They will take care of you.
Friends without hesitation I picked up my phone and called up the number and began speaking with the agents. Not realising that I was making an international call from India to Serbia whilst roaming on my London phone. So essentially I was paying some INR 35,000 per minute or something.
Literally moments before they could confirm my flight, my phone disconnected. And then I got a message from my London cellular service provider. “Hey bloody fool, you have hit the roaming expense limit you had set on your phone. To use further roaming, please go online and add funds.”
OK fine. I decided to connect to the airport wifi. This should be easy enough right? Never in human history has it been easier to give other people your money. Right? Apple Pay. UPI, Google PAY. Credit Card. Stripe. Link. So easy.
Wrong. Fools, all of us.
You see the airport WiFi only worked if you keyed in an OTP. And they sent you the OTP via a text message to your phone number. But my phone number could not receive OTPs any more because it was no longer roaming.
Friends, please reflect on this. I could not connect to internet because I did not have funds in my roaming account. I could not top up my roaming account because I could not connect to the internet.
I went and spoke to a few airport staff types. And they were all: “No boss, national security risk if we give OTP to some random dude in the airport.”
Eventually an Air India ground staff guy took pity on me and said he would get me the OTP on his number provided he could see what I was using the internet for.
And that is how I finally booked my tickets back to London via Abu Dhabi, through Belgrade.
At Abu Dhabi I briefly lost my boarding pass, before finding it again.
But that is a story for another day.
I believe we have discussed enough scenes from airports for today.
Have you enjoyed/created/witnessed/provoked scenes at airports? Please leave detailed comments.
Loved it. Was in splits when at a non noise free airport, Chennai maybe several years ago three young girls in the Ladies washroom clicking mirror selfies heard their names being announced and jumped for joy saying 'Hum famous ho gaye!!!!' Was hilarious.
I was a poor grad student in the UK, when my uncle invited me to join him on his work trip in Paris. Even tho the trip was in cold February of 2009, I was excited to see a new country. He had booked us a hotel on Champs Elysees!
The trip was fantastic: he was in meetings all day and I roamed Parisian streets covered in wool from head to toe, taking long-exposure photos. When it came time to say goodbye, I told him I will go to the airport with him and still have enough time to come back to get the Eurostar to London.
At the airport, he went up to the business class counter while the proletariat stood in the economy line. I was looking forward to giving him one last hug and bask in the glory of the trip, but the mood changed. I saw him in animated discussion with the lady on the counter. He was visibly red -- out of anger or embarrassment I couldn't tell.
Then he came back, walking very slowly. He said: "Beta, never ever do what I just did. Promise me. My flight was scheduled for yesterday, not today. Always check your documents and flight schedule. I've had to use all my gold-tier points to get a seat on the next flight."
I had never seen my rich, successful uncle in such a state ever before. He had failed and I was determined I would never fail. I never missed a flight until April 2024, when after watching my first total solar eclipse in Michigan, I got stuck in traffic and had to pay dearly to get the next available flight to DC where people were going to gather to hear me speak.
I immediately called him and I said: "Chacha, after 15 years I've finally broken the promise. I missed a flight today and I don't even feel bad. What I just witnessed in the eclipse was worth every penny and kilogram of carbon dioxide it cost." He laughed out loud, as I turned red in embarrassment.