Come fly with me
On a recent flight, a co-passenger was a stowaway seeking illegal entry into Italy
I’d never been on a flight on which one of my fellow passengers was a stowaway, a ticketless traveller. The flight was to Milan, and Bunny and I were on it.
The airline has as its mascot a chubby Maharaja with rakish moustachios, bestowing a welcoming namaste on prospective customers.
Before booking the flight we’d had qualms. Once representing one of the best airlines, the Maharaja had undergone not a few misadventures of late. On more than one occasion a passenger, high in more ways than one, had mistaken the occupied seat of a co-traveller for the loo and upon which he had relieved himself of his liquid ballast, much to the discomfiture of the recipient of the sudden downpour.
Would we be in for similar contretemps? Would it be prudent to arm ourselves with umbrellas against such an eventuality? Opening an umbrella indoors is said to bring bad luck. Did the taboo hold for the interiors of aeroplanes? In order to avoid getting direly drenched, might we invite some greater misfortune?
In the end we decided against umbrellas as carry-on baggage that Security Check might declare inadmissible as potential weaponry.
Fortunately, no one mistook our seats, with us in them, for an airborne Sulabh Sauchalaya.
It’s unlikely that the stowaway had been on an aircraft before, as the unauthorised passenger wasn’t a person, but a fly. It was the first time I’d ever seen a fly on a flight.
I tried to figure out if its presence on board added, infinitesimally, to the total load of the aircraft. If it remained airborne in the cabin, then it shouldn’t add to the load, but if it settled on a surface, even momentarily, would it do so? Was I getting my aerodynamics right? I didn’t know.
Anyway, all of us made the flight safely. I hope the stowaway got through Border Control unscathed and was not swatted by a hawk-eyed official for being an illegal migrant.
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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