Dialogue: Flying used to be fun, now it's just fear-filled

By BARBARA EWING

Another devastating, unbelievable air crash in New York haunts television screens, newspapers, radio and our thoughts.

Since the morning of September 11, what we see and what we hear is almost impossible to comprehend. And everywhere it is being said that fewer people are likely to get on planes.

British newspapers report that Hollywood stars are refusing to fly. The names of Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis are bandied about.

Stories are rife of the difficulty people of Arabian appearance are finding in being able to fly at all: pilots letting themselves down from the cockpit on a rope rather than fly an Arab; legitimate passengers being escorted off planes because nobody will sit next to them.

A Maori friend told me when that he was flying recently over America he was quick to talk loudly in a New Zealand accent about rugby and the All Blacks and Lord of the Rings.

Those were innocent days only a few months ago when I wrote about dancing in the aisles of a crowded Boeing to alleviate deep vein thrombosis.

But every day thousands of people still fly. I have just made a return trip to New Zealand and, despite world events, every seat on the jumbo jets was taken.

Now people stare, pale-faced, at The Map. The Map shows you, on your personal television screen, the route you are flying. A small, animated plane crosses the map of the world, taking you safely to your destination (if your plane isn't hijacked, or badly maintained, or a new soldier working as a surface-to-air-missile operator somewhere doesn't mistake you for a rogue vehicle).

I flew to New Zealand, or tried to fly to New Zealand, the night the American-led coalition, as it is carefully named, began bombing Afghanistan.

I was already in the crowded departure lounge at Heathrow Airport with my boarding pass when the departures board started clicking and whirring. Flights to New York cancelled, flights to Beirut cancelled, flights to Pakistan cancelled, flights to Riyadh cancelled, flights to Stockholm cancelled ...

My flight to Auckland via Singapore was only (rather ominously, I thought) delayed.

At 2 am, with the departure lounge closed and dimly lit - the food and drink vendors and the souvenir-sellers had long gone to their beds, world events notwithstanding - a disconsolate bunch of nearly 400 people sat palely watching one television screen showing bombs exploding somewhere in the direction of our journey. We didn't really want to fly any more.

But suddenly there was the sound of a microphone being turned on, and we were told we were to embark for Singapore. It felt odd, going through that tunnel that expels you on to the plane.

London doesn't feel safe but the sky feels even less safe when war is declared. Yet the plane was full.

We had been airborne about 30 minutes when the captain made an announcement. "Ladies and gentlemen, we regret to announce, due to circumstances beyond our control, that we are not flying to Singapore. We will, instead, be flying to Madras."

I knew Madras was somewhere in India but my geography was not much better than that.

"Where's Madras?" I asked the young man seated next to me.

"Spain," he said morosely.

All the passengers seemed glued to The Map.

I didn't always take such an interest in the route to Singapore in the old days but I seem to remember passing Germany and Turkey and Iran, with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan and Pakistan all somewhere near as we turned down through the Bay of Bengal to Malaysia and Singapore.

This night (or morning, or whatever it was) we seemed to fly over (and were extremely glad to be doing so, of course) Greece and Cyprus and maybe Cairo and into Saudi Arabia and down through the Yemen and Oman and across to India. How these latest events improve one's geography.

But when I raised the blind at the back of the plane (everybody having been instructed to close their blinds; why these days do we always have to travel over the world in darkness?) and saw that it was blazing day and we were flying over a magnificent desert, I was admonished by a steward to pull down the blind.

He said I was waking other passengers. But it occurred to me that he, like me, was scared.

Finally, after many, many hours on some day, in some time zone, we landed in a tiny dusk-tinged airport where no other commercial airliner could be seen - only small planes and small petrol tanks.

Everyone, especially in the crowded economy section, was almost screaming to get off the plane. But an announcement said: "Passengers in the economy section may not leave the aeroplane".

The harassed crew disappeared. Darkness fell and we were left in eerie silence.

I walked where I could, past other dazed passengers towards the front of the plane. The smell of cigarette smoke came wafting through from the old-fashioned rubbery tunnel that they had joined to the plane.

We refuelled. We were shut in. We took off. We flew on to Singapore. One day I arrived, most gratefully, at my destination, New Zealand.

We are living in troubled times and it seems almost impossible to make sense them. And there seem to be a few anomalies.

While I was in New Zealand, I was charged an extra "war tax" by Air New Zealand to fly between Whakatane and Auckland, $9 each way. And between Auckland and New Plymouth, $9 each way.

My hand-luggage was never examined at any time on any of these flights, and if my checked luggage was, it wasn't in my presence.

Singapore Airlines charges less than $2.50 for the same kind of tax between Singapore and London and my luggage was x-rayed over and over again.

Before the latest terrible air crash they kept saying nobody was flying, but not only were the big planes I flew on last month full, but it is almost impossible to get a seat to New Zealand from London in December or January, even if you fly via the United States.

It is true, of course, that some airlines are losing a lot of money, but only some airlines, and it has turned out that a lot of them, like British Airways, Air New Zealand and Sabena, were losing money before September 11.

Ironically it seems to be the planes flying over the Middle East that are always full. When I flew back to London three weeks after our rather extraordinary journey to New Zealand, the new route from Singapore had been settled on: India, Saudi Arabia, the Mediterranean. No extra stopover in Madras, but two crews and plastic knives.

Planes quite often fly with two crews now. They announce that your journey will take longer than it used to and that a second, fresh crew will take over halfway. You try and bury the idea that one crew may be guarding the cockpit door.

I could have gouged someone's eyes out with the metal fork between Auckland and Singapore. That is the kind of ridiculous thing you find yourself thinking in these insecure days, with the new fear of flying.

* Barbara Ewing, a writer and actor, divides her time between London and New Zealand.