Up in the Air

Is it an appropriate time to dance on a flight?

An artwork conveying well-wishes for the passengers and crew of the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 is seen at a viewing gallery in Kuala Lumpur International Airport March 19, 2014. (Reuters)

Leher Kala

It appears that while the world remained focussed on the tragic disappearance of Malaysia Airlines flight MH 370, Spice Jet cabin crew were busy rehearsing their dance moves for a performance on Holi. Flight attendants enthusiastically gyrated to the hit song Balam pichkari in the aircraft’s center aisle at 35,000 feet, entirely in keeping with the festive debauchery Holi is famous for. The three-minute video on YouTube is kind of cute, except that it also shows the co-pilot, who should ideally have been in the cockpit, filming his colleagues. To be fair to Spice Jet, airlines all around the world plan elaborate in-flight entertainment to make a journey memorable and Tweeted about. An agile steward on a Virgin Atlantic flight recently performed a quick split mid-air before skidding down the aisle to finish the safety procedure. Virgin America has also just released a five-minute music video to engage passengers, knowing most of us simply zone out during the very boring safety demonstration. The video features rapping children, a dancing nun and a contortionist. (It’s got over eight lakh hits on YouTube.)

I’m all for some lighthearted fun but does absolutely everything have to turn into a live show to grab people’s attention? Most airline passengers don’t care about gimmickry like this. They really only want better food, good movies to watch and to reach their destination on time. If the idea was to notch up a million online hits, this crew may well be on their way to achieving it but there’s something infantilising about adult flight attendants breaking into a jig for mostly adult passengers, even if it is Holi. If people really cared about the “Festival of colours” they would be playing it, not catching a flight on the day.

The DGCA may not be known for a sense of humour but it’s unlikely a little bit of harmless fun would have become such a big issue if air safety and protocol wasn’t so hugely in the news right now. It’s not so hard to gauge the mood of travellers and air traffic controllers everywhere, a week after a baffling tragedy. The airline could have cancelled or postponed the publicity stunt, because this is simply not the right time for cabin crew to break into song and dance. In the ’80s and ’90s, when flying wasn’t as common, it was usual for parents of children not to board a flight together. My husband and his father have never travelled on the same plane, the idea being that since they run a family business, they can’t both afford the risk. In this generation, the paranoia of flying has more or less vanished, besides it’s too inconvenient to plan separate arrivals. With MH370, at least temporarily, all our collective angst of flying has resurfaced. Air travel does indeed boast of a far superior safety record compared to other modes of transport. But for many people hurtling through clouds right now, they can’t help but wonder about the fate of one similar voyage.

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