Who's Sari Now?

Mack Hall

The fists and the curry were flying aboard an Air India flight last week as two pilots (male), an air hostess (female), and at least one other air host or hostess duked out their differences thousands of feet over Pakistan.

The fight began in the cockpit and continued in the galley. Given the public’s Roman fascination for viewing televised humiliation the passengers might have enjoyed the scene of violence if not for the alarming fact that the pilots were involved.

If one is aboard an Air India flight reading The Times of India, enjoying a nice cup of tea, and pondering a business deal involving Mahindra, the serenity of the journey is somewhat compromised by a fist-fight among the crew. And then the really existential question obtains at some point: who is flying the airplane? Does one want to entrust his life to any of these Gladiators of the Air?

The combatants, once they called a truce and landed the plane, gave conflicting statements. The air hostess said the pilots were making some aerial maneuvers on her, while one pilot says the air hostess began hitting him because an air host was offering her more than coffee or tea and she wanted to distract from the real problem, and, yeah, it doesn’t make any sense.

Thank goodness no one whupped out one of those soft plastic spoons that come with the meals, or perhaps a fingernail-clipper or even 1.1 ounce of baby formula. Whew!

If the fight had happened on a United Airlines plane, United would have charged the passengers extra for the entertainment.

Air crews used to give small children little plastic pilots’ wings; I suppose Air India would more appropriately hand out little pilots’ boxing gloves.

And where was the obligatory cute nun with her guitar to sing of peace and love, eh?

Maybe the crew were offended by the inflight movie choices: Gunga Din and Northwest Frontier.

Did the two Air India pilots hit the nearest airport bar and brag to other pilots about beating up a girl?

Captain Sculley and his crew they ain’t.

Accusations of sexual impropriety followed by some bee-slapping: one imagines the television movie, starring David Letterman, RuPaul, Glenn Beck, and one or two bishops, and directed by Roman Polanski, with the fight scenes choreographed by Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd.

Remember those airplane disaster movies of the 1970s? One has problems considering remakes with steel-jawed Charlton Heston punching out Karen Black and then tearfully apologizing by Twitter: “i R so bad 4 hit ing u 4-giv me? xxx ooo.”

The plane safely landed, the two pilots lost their licenses, and life goes on. One wonders if the pilots are as ready to fight Pakistan as they were to fight girls; Pakistan’s nuclear program is said to be developing nicely. When the nuclear missiles begin falling on the ancient cities of the subcontinent, folks in the target area might have a millisecond to long for the days of the Raj.

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