It was a thrilling experience to be called upon to make announcements on a foreign airline in an Arab country. I had this opportunity when I flew from Vienna to Colombo through Kuwait in 1984.
A rumor of a plan by LTTE terrorists of Sri Lanka to blow up an Air Lanka plane made me change my return flight schedule after the completion of my consultancy at the Internaional Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna in December 1984. A number of my friends and colleagues persuaded me to change my return itinerary on Air Lanka although I had confirmed seats on Business Class. Due to their constant pestering I agreed and entrusted the travel agency at the Vienna International Center to re-arrange my travel schedule.
Vienna International Center in which the IAEA is housed
As this was Christmas time it was virtually impossible for them to get me a good reservation to fly from Vienna to Colombo. Eventually they got seats for me to fly Business Class from Vienna to Kuwait on Lufthansa and from Kuwait to Colombo on Kuwait Airways which had only Economy Class seats.
The flight took off at night from Vienna on December 24th and Christmas dawned while we were flying some 38000 feet above ground (perhaps closer to heaven). There were Christmas décor in the cabin and the dawn of Christmas just past midnight of December 24, was celebrated with a special round of champagne accompanied by Christmas music. We landed in Kuwait early morning on Christmas day after a comfortable and enjoyable flight.
I had a transit time of about three hours and having obtained a boarding pass to fly the next sector on Kuwait Airways I ended up not in a transit lounge, but in a common embarkation area with passengers getting in from Kuwait. As this was a Kuwait-Colombo flight nearly 100% of the passengers were Sri Lankan blue collar workers from Kuwait. It was obvious that the locals treated these people with disdain and I too was one of them. If you say anything even good morning to anyone at the airport, the immediate response is ‘Do you work in Kuwait?’ If you say “Yes” you are treated like dirt.
As this was just a week after an Egypt Air plane was blown up in mid-air by a bomb planted in a checked in bag, there was exceptionally tight security prior to embarkation. Every hand luggage was opened and physically checked and all passengers were body searched. In addition the checked in luggage was all lined up near the plane but not loaded. Every passenger had to walk across the lined up baggage and identify his luggage which is then loaded and the passenger made to get into to the plane. This is to make sure that all the loaded baggage belonged to the passengers actually traveling in the plane. As most of the passengers were workers they were frantic in searching their luggage and once located would carry it themselves and load it on to the baggage conveyor belt while the paid laborers of Kuwait Airways assigned to do the job were relaxing with folded arms and watching the fun. I walked a couple of times up and down the lined up baggage and found both my bags checked in at Vienna missing. I looked around and recognized a commissioned officer giving orders to the laborers. I approached him and said “Excuse me” and was greeted by the standard response “You work in Kuwait?” I said “No” and explained to him that I had traveled on a Lufthansa flight from Vienna and is transferring to this flight to go to Colombo. Pointing out the Lufthansa plane parked a few hundred yards away I told the officer to get my baggage transferred. From the moment I said that I have traveled from Europe and spoke good English the officer’s attitude changed. He said “Don’t worry I’ll get your baggage”. He sent a jeep and my bags were fetched and loaded before I got into the plane. If not for that intervention I would have perhaps traveled to Colombo sans my checked baggage.
All the passengers have now emplaned and we were already 30 minutes behind departure time. The cabin crew was making repeated announcements in English in an Arabic accent that there are some bags on the ground waiting to be identified and loaded and this is causing the delay to take off. I realized that some of the passengers do not understand these announcements and brought this to the notice of a cabin crew member. The Chief Steward then came to me and asked whether I speak their dialect. When I said yes, he requested me to help them sort out this problem. I was taken to the public address system of the plane and was asked to make an announcement in the local language informing the passengers that unless the bags lying on the ground are identified the plane will take off in five minutes without those bags. I cautioned the steward that such an announcement will lead to chaos because all these passengers would want to get down and ensure that those bags do not belong to them. However, the steward was adamant and insisted that I make the announcement as instructed and that they will handle the passengers.
I took the microphone and announced in the local language “May I have your attention please” There was pin drop silence. The passengers could not believe their ears, announcements in Sinhala on a Kuwait Airways flight in Kuwait. Then I announced “Unless the bags left on the ground are identified within five minutes the plane will take off without them”. There was panic and pandemonium among the passengers. Everyone jumped out of their seats and wanted to rush out and check the bags on the ground. Some women were wailing this is all we have saved after slaving for years. Please let us get down and see. The cabin crew found it impossible to control the passengers and the Chief Steward came and pleaded with me to get the crowd back to their seats. Having told him “I told you so” I managed to get the crowd to return to their seats. Then the crew asked me how this can be handled? I went down with the Chief Steward and having checked the labels on some 12 bags on the ground noted the names of 8 passengers to whom they belonged. We came back and announced the names one by one and got the owners to go down in an orderly manner and identify the bags. Eventually the flight took off nearly one hour late.
The cabin crew thanked me profusely and rewarded me in a very awkward manner. As most of these passengers are not familiar with the use of toilet fittings on planes they make a mess in trying to use them. Hence the crew keeps an unmarked toilet for their exclusive use and I was given access to this secret facility.
