EK404 and the Poltergeist…
Posted on August 31st, 2010 by TWS
This was the worst I’ve seen. Wait until you hear this…
I flew to MEL last weekend on the regular Emirates EK404 shuttle. It wasn’t a full flight so I asked the staff at the lounge to find me a seat which had an empty seat beside me. Call me old fashioned – but I just value my space, especially flying on EK with the 3-4-3 configuration down the back.
About 10-minutes later, the lounge receptionist came running up to me like an excited school kid. She had a new boarding pass and had found me an exit row and had blocked off the other seats.
Excellent. Now I could relax. Well, as much as possible, sitting upright in an economy seat for 7-hours.
Anyway.
The loads to MEL have been up and down lately and this was one of those flights that was around 90% full. No op-up today. Bugger.
If you are a regular economy traveller on EK, you will know that some of the exit rows are slightly in front of the bulkhead seats. And it is these bulkhead seats which are normally reserved for families. But I was happy, as I had 37H, and the seats beside me free.
I had no idea what was coming my way…
Now, I’m no stranger to kids on planes. In fact, my wife tells me we have 2 of our own. And our kids have travelled extensively since they were babies.
When I was single and used to travel frequently, I used to treat parents with kids on planes like they had the ebola virus. I thought what a nightmare it must be. And very few kids pass up the opportunity to wind up their parents completely by ensuring they have a melt-down mid flight.
It’s only when you actually become a parent yourself that you truly understand what a challenge travelling with kids can be. I can tune screaming kids out on a plane now as easy as flicking a switch. And instead of looking at the suffering parents with disdain, I normally glance a look towards the father, give him the secret “sympathetic parent nod” at which he instantly acknowledges and then thank the lord that they aren’t my kids and that isn’t me.
We travel once a year as a family to see the in-laws in the US. A few years ago, I made an executive decision and told the freeloaders who live with me that we were no longer going to travel as a group. It was simply not working out.
So now when we travel, my son and I go separately to my wife and daughter. He loves it. My daughter and wife love it. Everyone’s happy. We start out in Singapore and then all meet up at a hotel in the US and we go on from there.
Someone asked me why we did this. They thought it was because I was worried about all of us going down in the one plane crash. Hardly.
I proceeded to tell this overly inquisitive person that traveling with a family is quite possibly one of the worst things you can do if you have spent the majority of your working life as a road warrior.
Everything shits me about traveling with a family. They walk too slowly through the airport. They want to go to the toilet every 5-minutes. They have no clue how to pack a bag. They look like slobs. Their seat area looks like like a group of swingers just finished an orgy and…and I don’t know what else. The whole thing really just gets up my frock.
Anyway. Back to the point of this post.
So there I was. Minding my own business in my exit row seat in 37H, trying to psyche myself up for the 7-hr trip home to Melbourne.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a family board and occupy the bulkhead row with 2 young boys, who I found out later to be 18-months and 5-years old respectively. On the surface, everything appeared normal.
They had started their journey in Dubai, so this was the second leg of a very anti-social schedule, given that the flight from SIN-MEL departs at 10.30pm.
I can’t remember when it started. I think it must have been after we had taken off. It’s all a bit of a blur now.
The family as it turns out were South African. And the father was this rather short, stocky guy, dressed in shorts, sandals and a t-shirt, with a logo representing some sort of emergency services organisation. My guess was that he was either a fire fighter, paramedic or something in between.
The 5-year old then loses it completely.
I mean he implodes. I have never seen anything like it. And nor do I wish to see anything like it ever again. We’re not talking about a kid throwing a hissy fit because you took his Nintendo DS away. Or because the older brother called him gay. Or the same older brother whispered in his ear that he was adopted and his parents bought him cheap at a flea market.
Nothing like that.
I mean this kid went ballistic. Psycho violent. Eyeballs spinning around the back of his head. Spitting and foaming at the mouth. Gritting his teeth and screaming. And then trying to escape the bulkhead section to run amok and cause as much chaos as possible.
I’ve often wondered why law enforcement doesn’t use kids in hostage negotiation situations. You’d simply find 2 of these mentally unhinged kids, give them 2 redbulls, walk up to the bank, push the miscreants inside and let them do their thing.
No need for flash bang grenades, tear gas, highly trained men in black performing acts of bravery. The siege would be over in 10-mins because I would hesitate to guess that people who decided that robbing a bank and taking hostages was a good idea, probably weren’t that intelligent to work out how to actually breed. So their parenting skills would be non existent. They would have no clue and simply collapse, driven to complete despair. Surrender would be a welcome relief.
Back to the inflight saga then.
To their credit, the EK trolley dollies were performing admirably up to this point. A couple of them tried to intervene, but when the 5-year old brushed them to one side with quite possibly the scariest stare I have ever seen, they ran to their crew rest sobbing.
The father though was amazing. He didn’t raise his voice. He didn’t lose it. He never once got physical with the child, apart from gently restraining him so he wouldn’t escape or hurt someone else. He continued to speak calmly, despite some of the foulest language ever to leave the mouth of a human being and be directed towards ones own parent.
The mother just sat there trying to calmly talk to the small person she had partially created. It was to no avail.
I think the bulk of the passengers were so completely taken back and shocked by all of this, that none of them dared complain. They were too frightened that the 3 foot poltergeist might turn on them.
I know if that was me, I would have lost it. My simple parenting skills include violence and intimidation and if I cannot get through to either of my children using reason and logic, I will quickly escalate to “fighting fire with fire”. Especially on an aircraft.
So how this poor father remained calm was beyond me. He didn’t appear to be on any medication of his own.
I don’t think for one minute that if he had have beaten his son to a pulp, that anyone would have testified against him. People would have nodded sympathetically during the hearing that in fact, he was perfectly within his rights to do so, given the homicidal behaviour.
Anyway, the kid finally calmed down. He went to sleep – but with one eye open.
There was a collective sigh of relief by the entire rear section of the plane. The staff poured everyone another round of drinks. Even a group of Jehovah’s Witnesses were doing vodka shots…
I couldn’t help it and just had to say something to the father, given that I was right across the aisle.
I can’t remember how I started the conversation – probably something along the lines of “you look like you need a drink” or something equally as corny.
He agreed.
I then politely asked “so is your son retarded or something?”
Actually, I kid.
But the father did admit that the kid had AHT. Or was it ADD. It was something that consisted of 3 letters and sounded important. Except for the fact that it’s all hogwash.
I don’t buy that “but he’s got attention deficit disorder”. No he doesn’t. What he’s got is a bad case of genes. And what he needs is a kick up the ass.
When one of the cabin attendants sat down in the jump seat opposite me, she nervously looked towards the now sleeping mutant of a child and whispered “that’s the worst I have ever seen on a flight…”
And it was for me too.
Pray for me dear readers as I am about to, once again, jump on EK404 in about 6-hours time.
I’m clearly too old for this shit…
