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Thursday, Jul 9, 2009
The hazards of flying while Muslim. Plus: Africa's coolest airport, surly airport staff, dangerous T-shirts.
By Patrick Smith
Read more: Technology & Business, Flying, Africa, Business, Muslims, P. Smith, Ask the Pilot
Patrick Smith
Arrivals hall at Kotoka airport, Accra, Ghana.
Jan. 9, 2009 | "I remember a quote, though I can't recall the exact words, or who the speaker was, basically submitting that human beings will only be as kind or respectful to each other as they are kind and respectful to animals and nature."
That was me, a couple of months ago, in my column from Senegal about the slum and the hedgehog. I belatedly tracked down the quotation I was thinking of. The speaker is hardly obscure. "The greatness of a nation and its moral progress," the quote goes, "can be judged by the way its animals are treated." That's from Mohandas Gandhi. Various like sentiments are cataloged here.
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I was back in Senegal recently. There I met up with Mustafa M'Baye, the freelance tour guide who had taken me to that awful slum on the outskirts of the capital. The last Mustafa saw of me, I was headed to my room at the Sofitel with an injured hedgehog concealed in a bag. Through e-mail, he had been asking about the status of the "somall anamil."
I lied. I told him that the hedgehog had survived -- that it had regained its strength and that I'd released it in a field near the hotel. I lied because it was easier. And because I wished it had been so. And because I didn't want to dwell again on the poor animal's death and all the other unsavory things I had seen that day. And also, maybe, to save face, because I suspect that Mustafa saw me as a fool for trying to save the creature in the first place.
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On a slightly different note, have a look at this photograph. It was taken on an oceanside road behind the Sofitel there in Dakar. "Obama and Biden," says the oversize spray paint, "The New World Bilders [sic]." The picture was taken about two days after the election. Such a sentiment wouldn't have surprised me so much in, say, Anglophonic Ghana or, for obvious reasons, in Kenya. But in French West Africa? The next evening at the Dakar airport, three men begged me to give them the "Obama '08" campaign pin I was wearing on my lapel. Without reading too much into it, are things like this symptomatic, maybe, of a sudden and renewed respect for the United States? Heaven knows we could use it.
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My thoughts on the seediness of the Dakar airport have been given their due in this column, but what about an African airport that is actually welcoming? That'd be Kotoka International in Accra, Ghana. It's clean, efficient and relatively spacious. And check out the colorful murals and soccer balls that adorn Kotoka's arrivals hall -- a flourish of local character sorely lacking at most airports.
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Switching continents, what would your expectations be of the airport in Georgetown, Guyana? Well, whatever you're picturing, it's probably not this.
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What you can't see in the photo from Guyana is the smartly dressed ground staff that greets each arrival. From the baggage handlers to the caterers to the fuelers, everybody there is friendly, prompt and professional. This is hardly exclusive to Guyana. It always amazes me how professional the ground workers are at airports outside the United States, even in poor countries. They are often neatly uniformed, and in some cities will stand in formation as the airplane pulls in. Heck, in Japan it's traditional for the workers, clad in jumpsuits and hard hats, to bow to departing flights.
The equipment used at foreign airports -- the carts and tugs and cargo loaders -- also tends to be in much better condition than our own. Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of hardworking staff in airports across America; but all too often the typical gateside scene is one of rusted-out, banged-up vehicles and scowling workers in Yankees caps and greasy untucked shirts, who act as though they can't be bothered to marshal in your plane.
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Don't look now, but just when you thought airline liveries couldn't get more awful comes the hideous corporate makeover of CSA, the airline of the Czech Republic. There was nothing remarkable about CSA's prior uniform, pictured here, but at least the colors and tail pattern borrowed from the Czech flag. The bizarre new scheme is painful to look at and, best I can tell, completely meaningless. Is that a breath mint?
In my opinion, among the many national carriers that have updated their identities lately, only that of EgyptAir, apparently sponsored by an arena football team, is more embarrassing.
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Maybe this is a cheap shot, but here goes. A few months back I told you about Arpinder Kaur, the first and only female Sikh airline pilot in the United States. In the piece, as part of my lament about American xenophobia and our irrational suspicions of people who wear turbans, I wrote that Sikhism and radical Islamic terror have nothing in common.
I suppose that is true, generally speaking, but indeed it was Sikh terrorists who were responsible for the fifth-worst air disaster of all time, the bombing of an Air India 747 over the North Atlantic in 1985. The airplane fell into the sea near Ireland, killing 329 people. A second bomb, intended to blow up another Air India 747 on the same day, detonated prematurely in a luggage facility at Tokyo's Narita Airport. The attacks were intended as retaliation for the Indian army's 1984 siege of the Golden Temple shrine in Amritsar, Sikhism's holiest place of worship. Indira Gandhi, who ordered the siege, was later assassinated by two of her Sikh bodyguards.
I mention this for no other reason than to emphasize that radical Islamists are not the only people who have blown up airplanes. They've had plenty of company. We often forget that the history of air crimes is a long and complicated one. Even ordinary Americans have played their part: The first successful sabotage of a commercial jet -- the insurance-scam dynamiting of a Continental Airlines 707 over Missouri -- came courtesy of a 34-year-old American named Tom Doty. In 1974, an unemployed tire salesman from Philadelphia stormed a Delta Air Lines DC-9 in Baltimore and shot both pilots. His intentions were to crash the jet into the White House.
Etc.
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