Low, very low

Buget airlines have been asked to ensure that they now issue proper seat numbers, and thank heavens for that. Let us hope the move will bring some order into our terminal chaos, when protocol, decorum and order of precedence figure nowhere.

Buget airlines have been asked to ensure that they now issue proper seat numbers, and thank heavens for that. Let us hope the move will bring some order into our terminal chaos, when protocol, decorum and order of precedence figure nowhere. In the days of seatnumber-less travel, it was a jungle out there and your best bet was to give your animal instincts free rein.

Unlike low-cost airliners abroad, where in case of a free-seating plan the order of boarding is dictated by the order of check-in, here it is based on an authentic first-come-first-served system. Never mind mothers with four children and three bags or aged seers reciting their prayers on a rosary. Each and everyone is made to scamper and scurry to the boarding queues in order to be among the first.

Another interesting phenomenon is the speculation over which gate would host which airline8217;s boarding queue. Wrong predictions lead to sudden herd-like exoduses, causing mothers to become reckless, seers to curse and the able-bodied to take uncalculated risks like jumping over furniture.

When the bus carrying the passengers pulls up on the tarmac outside the aircraft, every one follows George Orwell8217;s dictum 8220;all animals are equal 8212; but some animals are more equal than others8221;. Forget jet lag, travel fatigue, even travel sickness, everyone8217;s adrenalin is by now flowing at optimum levels. Even eighty-year-old grandmas transmogrify into fierce carnivores. The idea is to jump into the aircraft and bag a seat. Once inside the belly of the aircraft, everybody rushes to bag a window seat. Those who are not successful quickly settle for the next best: aisle seats.

We have apparently come a long way from our days in the jungle, but low-budget airlines have certainly brought out the animal in each man, woman and child in India. You either hunt, or get hunted; push or get pushed out of the great aviation battle for survival.

I guess, when it comes to flying cheap, you can take the human being out of the jungle but not the jungle out of the human being!