Reflections on Life Six Miles Up
Publisher – Amaryllis
Review Copy Provided By Amaryllis
The reviewer of the book is my dad, K.S.Loganathan, a consultant for tyre and rubber.
In the heydey of civil aviation, airlines treated a passenger “like a maharajah” while striving for On-Time Performance, safety and rolling in profits. The somewhat old-fashioned term “jet set” used to denote a class of wealthy people who frequently travelled all over the world. English-speaking girls from middle-class families saw in being a flight attendant a paying proposition as a finishing school six miles up, and a means to satisfy their wanderlust while waiting for Mr. Right. As mass travel aspirations grew, so did competition among the airlines, and there emerged “a cattle class”, which turned the profession into galley slavery, the attendants becoming totally exhausted at the end of their shifts, even as their efforts at providing “unbeatable customer service” floundered.
Pinky Eppaturi, the author, has worked as a flight attendant with two international airlines for two decades until 2015. Through the eyes of Pari Abraham, the protagonist, working in the authentic spirit and style of today’s flight attendants, she relates her odyssey. The narrative is complete with incidents of boorish passengers, tantrum-throwing celebrities, raucous touring parties and the infrequent medical emergencies, weather turbulence or mechanical failures, with occasional references to the universe and God.
After 9/11, air security has become a paramount concern. The clamour to blacklist disruptive passengers from all airlines is only likely to increase further.
Flying has always fascinated humans, going from point A to point B at speeds up to 550 miles per hour, even though the earth itself is hurtling through space at a whopping 68,000 miles per hour while rotating on its tilted axis. It is no wonder that the after-effects of jet-lag and confinement in closed spaces are severe on the human body, more so, on frequent flyers. One can only imagine the physiological demands of space travel.
Reading the book, one wonders if the job ever encompassed employee engagement and career development within the enterprise and why in the age of automation, cannot the catering tasks be mechanised or partly ground-based.
To quote H.H. Asquith, Earl of Oxford, who famously said of a book, “You should read it, though there is much that is skip-worthy”. The book is, on the whole, well produced, although the incomplete glossary and the white-on-black printed blocks passing for footnotes are at cross-purposes, the latter interrupting the flow of the book.
