A problem on Flight 700
Alistair Home
The cruel and unnatural punishment of air travel is not always the fault of the muchabused air traffic controllers. Having been a Guest Fellow at the Wilson Centre in Washington DC for seven happy months, I was due to return to England earlier this Summer. Regulations required me to travel, in bizarre commercial parlance, 'in an American bottom' (for which my kind hosts would pay), but my excess baggage — five heavy suitcases and a pair of skis — was Payable by me. The choice of a 'bottom' lay between PanAm and TWA. I discovered that PanAm would permit one less free Piece of baggage than TWA; and though TWA offered no direct flights from Washington to London ,I felt that the saving of $49 on the extra bag to be worth the minor bore Of changing planes at Kennedy airport, New York.
So I embraced the delights of TWA, Which advertises on US television that You're Going to Like Us — TWA!' At Xennedy airport, encumbered by a mass of hand luggage (typewriters etc), I found the two TWA gates approximately half-a-mile apart, with neither porters nor trolleys' apparently permissible between the two. Having staggered to the right gate, I was met by scenes reminiscent of the last hours at Dunkirk (never let me hear Americans complain about the horrors of overcrowded Heathrow!). The boarding (by a slow trickle) of Flight 700 took some 45 minutes. Aboard the packed 747, the omens continued badly enough to prompt me to begin scribbling notes.
A steely stewardess announces on the intercom: Will passenger Horne claim his typewriter, or it will be put off.' Feeling like a criminal, I walk the length of the plane to the `garmentbag locker' (where a male steward had instructed me to place the typewriter), retrieve the offending object and — under the instructions of another lady whose general amiability makes me feel she would have been better employed looking after the inmates of what Evelyn Waugh liked to call 'Zing-Zing' — tramp with it to a locker at the other end of the aircraft.
Half an hour late, we reach the end of the runway and are waiting for take-off when a wardress (sorry, stewardess) announces in a more jaunty tone: 'We must ask you folks to be patient a few seconds more; we have a lady on board who has changed her mind and wishes to be removed from the aircraft. Therefore we have to return to the gate.' I am dumbfounded. Can one really change one's mind at that point? If so, I reflect, maybe it is a prerogative one should exercise more frequently in future each time an airline wardress/stewardess is disagreeable.
At a cost of x thousand dollars in fuel, the giant plane taxis back to Gate 30 to release its lone recalcitrant. We wait. After a long interval a second announcement now refers mysteriously to 'security problems with the deplaning [pace William Safire] passenger's papers', and adds that there will be a further small delay while her baggage is located. (How, I muse with foreboding, can one solitary suitcase be located in the hold of a full 747 without unloading the lot. The answer comes shortly . . .) But meanwhile there is a third announcement, this time from the Captain himself: 'The problem has been solved, but anyone who is nervous may transfer to another flight. However, all other flights are full . .
Nervous? About what? I ask our friendly stewardess if she could translate this gobbledygook for a simple foreigner, and receive a baleful glare for my pains. Now there is a distinct aroma of unease pervading the plane, reinforced by rumours that the 'deplaning' lady is Jordanian — hence the 'security problem'. Nearly two hours pass and there is no move; nor any food or morale-restoring drinks. Finally comes the fourth, and anticipated announcement: all baggage to be unloaded, all passengers to 'deplane', identify and recheck their belongings; anything unclaimed will then be left behind. Stampede and chaos as 400 passengers move at once. I am paralysed at the prospect of five vast cases, plus a pair of skis, typewriter etc across a porterless and trolleyless airport.
But another three-quarters of an hour passes, the baggage belt has rotated several hundred times, and three of my cases are still missing. Meanwhile, most of the pas sengers have `replaned' leaving a dispirited small group waiting — like myself — for missing bags; while on the belt continue to rotate some hundred unclaimed pieces. Truth dawns; the baggage of two separate TWA flights, both bound (one hopes) for London, have become muddled. Nevertheless, we remnants are swept back by three grumpy TWA officials on to the plane. But how, one wonders, can the airline be absolutely sure — under the chaotic cir cumstances — that the luggage of the Arab lady, with its putative bomb, is not still on one or other of the two planes? Nothing further is ever said to reassure us on this point, or about the security problem.
Past midnight, four hours and ten minutes late, we finally heave off the ground. A female announcer tells us, without further explanation, that we 'are a great team'. Some of the passengers clap — rather foolishly, to my mind. But I suppose one should be glad to arrive at Heathrow unexploded. I am reunited with my two missing cases, but on loading them into the car discover that one has been irreparably ripped. Promptly I telephone TWA to report the damage and request — as a working journalist — elucidation about the 'security problem'. I am told that (1) a claim form will be mailed to me, and that (2) 'Customer Relations' will ring back shortly.
Neither happens. My secretary pursues the matter, and hears — sotto voce — on the other end of the line: 'It's that awkward man complaining about his baggage.' Finally she is told that it is airline policy not to issue either a claim form, or information, without a written request. This was immediately dispatched, and three weeks later TWA Customer Relations wrote to say that 'The flight was delayed due to problems encountered prior to departure at check-in. Once baggage has been received by a TWA staff member it is under our security. Normally, baggage goes on the same flight as the passenger but in this instance, due to the problems which occurred, this was not possible.'
No doubt one should be grateful to TWA if indeed their vigilance saved us all from a nasty bang in mid-Atlantic, and should endorse any precautions against even a remote possibility of terrorism. But certain questions remain: Why all the mystery about the 'security problem' in the announcements on the plane, which could only have fanned alarm? And why the continued mystery from TWA in London? How, in view of the baggage muddle at Kennedy airport, could the suspect suitcase have been satisfactorily identified? Why the lack of friendliness or helpfulness by TWA, both aboard Flight 700 and on the ground? 'You're Going to Like Us TWA'. Perhaps they are all just as bad.
Previous page
