There's no room for racism, certainly not after a crash landing
Have you noticed that we don’t write about things like missing aircraft, air crashes, air accidents, and other stuff of similar sort on this blog? Not because we aren’t aware of the incidents (we are), not because of a lack of information (we do read stuff!), and certainly not because we don’t care (because we most certainly do). But very simply this: because we want to have a positive feel about what we write about.
Which is why we haven’t written about the crash landing of EK521 Emirates aircraft traveling from Trivandrum (Tiruvananthapuram) International Airport (TRV) to Dubai (DXB)…until now.
This post isn’t about points, miles, or promotions. Not mattress and mileage runs, or cheap miles or even Jet Airways Fare Choices. This is going to be a long one, and a rant at that.
But it is about humanity, and that means each and every one of us. And it comes out as a learning from the recent crash landing in Dubai, of Emirates flight EK521.
Firstly, it is amazing that everyone – all 282 passengers and 18 crew members – aboard the B777 flight EK521 from TRV in India to DXB came out of the incident safe, if shaken to some degree.
Here’s a video shot by a passenger on board the flight, at the time of the evacuation operations.
Our congratulations to the crew, who we're most thankful to, who were obviously responsible in getting the passengers out, before themselves finally leaving the aircraft. Nothing short of a small miracle, because apparently a few moments after evacuation, the aircraft burst into flames.
Our thoughts also go out to the family of one firefighter – identified as Jassim Essa Al-Baloushi – who lost his life during the rescue operations. You were a brave man, and you didn’t die in vain.
We should be thankful for all those people – the crew, the firefighters, and possibly even some of the passengers – who made sure that everyone on board was safe in the end.
That said, one thing that a lot of people are talking about, based on the video (first one above), is about passengers trying to get their cabin baggage out to take with them at the time of the emergency evacuation.
I’ve been following several posts on Boarding Area as well as mainstream media, on this particular aspect. And pretty much all of them deal with why it isn’t a good idea to get your luggage. And their reasons are all perfectly valid: it slows down the process, life is more important than what’s in that bag, additional materials may actually hamper the evacuation – possibly even damaging the slides, what have you.
Sure, some of the passengers did err in attempting to take their luggage with them. No doubt about it. And I'm not even going to comment on the person that had time to record the video...but for all that error in judgement, I think there's a lesson for many (if not all) of us.
Which is why I felt that all of those comments and advice on blogs and in media, at least the majority of what I’ve been reading, seem to be made in positive spirit and with a view to educate readers what to do and not to do in an emergency evacuation situation. And that is perfectly fine.
What’s not perfectly fine, is this reported pile of racist nonsense from apparently someone who’s a flight attendant with another airline.
Fucking rats? Indian sectors at stupid o’clock? Untameable bunch? And as you can see, there were also comments that added to or supported the post in some manner.
FIRSTPOST doesn’t mince words in this piece:
And if you thought that was a one-sided view from the Indian press, here’s another piece that quotes nothing less than the New York Times:
So it looks like those fucking rats and untameable bunch are everywhere, on flights from every o’clock, on every airline. And they will be.
What manner of humans are we if we want to win only by putting down the other person?
But even that isn’t the point of this post.
If you’re reading this, you’re possibly well (or at least reasonably well) educated, have stayed at a hotel or flown on a plane once in your life, have a firm roof over your head, and aren’t worried about your or your family’s next meal. I'd like you to forget all of that for a few minutes.
Instead, I’d like you to take a walk in the shoes of a person.
He is a labourer or a low-wage earner from India or Asia, even, working in the Middle East. No 24-hour air-conditioning for him…heck, no air-conditioning at all. Here he is in a foreign land. He probably works at a construction site in temperatures upwards of 45 deg Celsius. His documents have likely been retained by his employer, and he doesn’t even get paid half of what you’d consider a minimum wage in your country. He lives in a tiny room he calls home – possibly no bigger than your pantry – which he shares with 5 other people. His entire wardrobe would likely fit on a standard carry-on with tons of room to spare. He’s left his parents, his wife, his children, everyone he knows, back home, so he can eke out a living in the Middle East. He doesn’t have a choice, though, because his family back home is depending on him to wire money back every month, so they can sustain themselves…barely. And all he has – his identity documents, his passport, his wallet, his life savings…his entire life, as it were – is in that one carry-on in the overhead luggage bin. Of an aircraft that is might disintegrate any minute. Which you want him to forget about...
[Before I'm attacked on grounds of sexism, let me state that I've used "he" references for simplicity. It could equally well be a person of any gender.]
Now if that was you, and your flight just crash-landed, would you be recalling the safety video that asked you to leave your luggage behind in cases of an emergency evacuation, and think about the safe evacuation of 281 other passengers? Or would your mind be racing with thoughts about what might happen, whether you’ll survive, how you’d pay your hospital bills if you were severely injured, and what your family back home would do and how they’d survive if you didn’t?
Did you pick the latter? Thought as much. Heck, you (or I, for that matter) might be in first class and would still pick the latter...every single time.
I’m willing to hazard a guess that there was at least one passenger on board the EK521 in question, who fit the above description. That might have been you. Or even the flight attendant from another airline who posted the racist Facebook post. Does that not change the status quo a bit?
People do crazy things in desperate times. Shipra of Live From A Lounge, who has airline crew experience, shares her experiences here. If someone like her, who’s seen and done safety videos and demos multiple times a day and is presumably expected to remain calm in a situation like this, says what she does, what chance do normal folks like you and I have in an emergency?
I've seen advice on what to do in an emergency, on several posts recently. Well-meaning advice is well-meaning; no truck with that. But often, irrational behavior needs to be understood before it is berated. And no more than in times of extreme stress and distress such as this one.
So this post isn't to apologise for - or in defence of - Asians, Indians or Malayalis in the context of the EK521 incident or otherwise. Rather, I'd like it to be one which seeks broader empathy for your fellow man.
There’s way too much hatred in today’s world…be it in the relatively small manner of the Facebook post referenced above, or as large as an American president hopeful thinking of building a wall across the country’s land borders, and everything in between. And if there’s any way we can hope change that, it must begin with changing ourselves.
I started this post saying this isn't about flights and miles and the like. I stand corrected. Through an average life-span of say 80 years, each of us clocks about 46.72 billion miles around the sun - some of us a little more or a little less. With all those miles, we'll all have super-duper-ultra-executive-platinum status if there were a loyalty program. Sadly, there's none. Yet, if we could all just be a little more tolerant and show a little more empathy to our fellow humans, I'd consider spectacular value for each and every mile we'll ever clock.
Which is why we haven’t written about the crash landing of EK521 Emirates aircraft traveling from Trivandrum (Tiruvananthapuram) International Airport (TRV) to Dubai (DXB)…until now.
Pic credit: Al Arabiya
This post isn’t about points, miles, or promotions. Not mattress and mileage runs, or cheap miles or even Jet Airways Fare Choices. This is going to be a long one, and a rant at that.
But it is about humanity, and that means each and every one of us. And it comes out as a learning from the recent crash landing in Dubai, of Emirates flight EK521.
Note: I’ve quoted some strong / possibly objectionable language from media.
Here’s a video shot by a passenger on board the flight, at the time of the evacuation operations.
Evacuation video of #Emirates #EK521 from crash landing #Dubai #Airport this afternoon. Brave #CabinCrew pic.twitter.com/kEZuFh2aa6— Rehan Quereshi (@rehanquereshi) August 3, 2016
Our congratulations to the crew, who we're most thankful to, who were obviously responsible in getting the passengers out, before themselves finally leaving the aircraft. Nothing short of a small miracle, because apparently a few moments after evacuation, the aircraft burst into flames.
Our thoughts also go out to the family of one firefighter – identified as Jassim Essa Al-Baloushi – who lost his life during the rescue operations. You were a brave man, and you didn’t die in vain.
We should be thankful for all those people – the crew, the firefighters, and possibly even some of the passengers – who made sure that everyone on board was safe in the end.
That said, one thing that a lot of people are talking about, based on the video (first one above), is about passengers trying to get their cabin baggage out to take with them at the time of the emergency evacuation.
I’ve been following several posts on Boarding Area as well as mainstream media, on this particular aspect. And pretty much all of them deal with why it isn’t a good idea to get your luggage. And their reasons are all perfectly valid: it slows down the process, life is more important than what’s in that bag, additional materials may actually hamper the evacuation – possibly even damaging the slides, what have you.
Sure, some of the passengers did err in attempting to take their luggage with them. No doubt about it. And I'm not even going to comment on the person that had time to record the video...but for all that error in judgement, I think there's a lesson for many (if not all) of us.
Which is why I felt that all of those comments and advice on blogs and in media, at least the majority of what I’ve been reading, seem to be made in positive spirit and with a view to educate readers what to do and not to do in an emergency evacuation situation. And that is perfectly fine.
What’s not perfectly fine, is this reported pile of racist nonsense from apparently someone who’s a flight attendant with another airline.
Fucking rats? Indian sectors at stupid o’clock? Untameable bunch? And as you can see, there were also comments that added to or supported the post in some manner.
FIRSTPOST doesn’t mince words in this piece:
The assumption clearly is that it is only people from a certain race or region who think about securing their worldly possessions even in times like these. Unfortunately, aviation history is replete with examples of people of different races doing exactly this: disregarding the danger to their lives as well as their co-passengers' and pouncing for bags. So this love for worldly possessions is not an Indian or a Mallu thing — it is a common reaction, and most passengers reach for their bags when leaving an aircraft in a hurry, no matter which part of the world they were born in.
And if you thought that was a one-sided view from the Indian press, here’s another piece that quotes nothing less than the New York Times:
When US Airways Flight 1549 splashed down in the Hudson river in January 2009, passengers were equally worried about their baggage despite the life-threatening emergency. Passenger Chris Hinkle told the Guardian: "All of a sudden it hit me: here I was in the Hudson, a single Australian woman in another country with no identification. I leaned over to the lady next to me and asked if she thought it would be OK for me to go back into the plane to get my passport.”
Look at what the New York Times wrote about those moments: "There was the woman in the fur coat who asked a stranger to go back inside the slowly sinking plane to fetch her purse. The man who carried his garment bag onto the wing with him."
And this: "Dave Sanderson, 47, a salesman for Oracle, said he saw a woman in her 60s pulling her luggage out of the overhead bin. “I just started screaming, ‘Get out, get out!’ She said, ‘I need my stuff,’ ” Mr. Sanderson said. “Another gentleman who did a great job — he’s a hero — actually picked her up and threw her on the lifeboat.” Her luggage was floating in the river."
So it looks like those fucking rats and untameable bunch are everywhere, on flights from every o’clock, on every airline. And they will be.
What manner of humans are we if we want to win only by putting down the other person?
But even that isn’t the point of this post.
If you’re reading this, you’re possibly well (or at least reasonably well) educated, have stayed at a hotel or flown on a plane once in your life, have a firm roof over your head, and aren’t worried about your or your family’s next meal. I'd like you to forget all of that for a few minutes.
Instead, I’d like you to take a walk in the shoes of a person.
He is a labourer or a low-wage earner from India or Asia, even, working in the Middle East. No 24-hour air-conditioning for him…heck, no air-conditioning at all. Here he is in a foreign land. He probably works at a construction site in temperatures upwards of 45 deg Celsius. His documents have likely been retained by his employer, and he doesn’t even get paid half of what you’d consider a minimum wage in your country. He lives in a tiny room he calls home – possibly no bigger than your pantry – which he shares with 5 other people. His entire wardrobe would likely fit on a standard carry-on with tons of room to spare. He’s left his parents, his wife, his children, everyone he knows, back home, so he can eke out a living in the Middle East. He doesn’t have a choice, though, because his family back home is depending on him to wire money back every month, so they can sustain themselves…barely. And all he has – his identity documents, his passport, his wallet, his life savings…his entire life, as it were – is in that one carry-on in the overhead luggage bin. Of an aircraft that is might disintegrate any minute. Which you want him to forget about...
[Before I'm attacked on grounds of sexism, let me state that I've used "he" references for simplicity. It could equally well be a person of any gender.]
Now if that was you, and your flight just crash-landed, would you be recalling the safety video that asked you to leave your luggage behind in cases of an emergency evacuation, and think about the safe evacuation of 281 other passengers? Or would your mind be racing with thoughts about what might happen, whether you’ll survive, how you’d pay your hospital bills if you were severely injured, and what your family back home would do and how they’d survive if you didn’t?
Did you pick the latter? Thought as much. Heck, you (or I, for that matter) might be in first class and would still pick the latter...every single time.
I’m willing to hazard a guess that there was at least one passenger on board the EK521 in question, who fit the above description. That might have been you. Or even the flight attendant from another airline who posted the racist Facebook post. Does that not change the status quo a bit?
People do crazy things in desperate times. Shipra of Live From A Lounge, who has airline crew experience, shares her experiences here. If someone like her, who’s seen and done safety videos and demos multiple times a day and is presumably expected to remain calm in a situation like this, says what she does, what chance do normal folks like you and I have in an emergency?
I've seen advice on what to do in an emergency, on several posts recently. Well-meaning advice is well-meaning; no truck with that. But often, irrational behavior needs to be understood before it is berated. And no more than in times of extreme stress and distress such as this one.
So this post isn't to apologise for - or in defence of - Asians, Indians or Malayalis in the context of the EK521 incident or otherwise. Rather, I'd like it to be one which seeks broader empathy for your fellow man.
There’s way too much hatred in today’s world…be it in the relatively small manner of the Facebook post referenced above, or as large as an American president hopeful thinking of building a wall across the country’s land borders, and everything in between. And if there’s any way we can hope change that, it must begin with changing ourselves.
I started this post saying this isn't about flights and miles and the like. I stand corrected. Through an average life-span of say 80 years, each of us clocks about 46.72 billion miles around the sun - some of us a little more or a little less. With all those miles, we'll all have super-duper-ultra-executive-platinum status if there were a loyalty program. Sadly, there's none. Yet, if we could all just be a little more tolerant and show a little more empathy to our fellow humans, I'd consider spectacular value for each and every mile we'll ever clock.
Excellent Sir. Completely agree with you. Hats off!!!
ReplyDelete