Sometime in mid 2009 I was traveling in Sprite's Bet Airlines from Bangalore to Delhi. You would agree, how wonderful it feels when you go home after months, especially if you don’t work in the same city where your parents live. The house you call home, the city or town you call your home town, you always love to go there, rest are all rented places or your bought accommodations. So like everyone, I was happy, full of thoughts, plans, eager to go home from BLR to Delhi then to Noida by a cab or auto and then to Haridwar by a bus. Two weeks of vacation from office’s madness, wow!
So the day came, and I am inside this Sprite's bet’s plane, sitting with other guests as they call now “guests” not passengers, our plane is waiting for its turn to go the main runway for the take off. Our Pilot’s introduction announcement, about himself, his co pilot, about the crew, air hostesses namely “Sunaina”, “Komal” and “Maria” who were there to make this flight memorable as they all had pledged in their trainings not to leave any stone/cloud unturned in order to make flights comfortable and memorable. I always think why all Air hostesses have such nice artistic names, well for a minute I was lost. Flight took off on time, but as usual the cloudy sky above Bangalore forced us to remain seated with fastened seat belts signals on. After 15 minutes then came captain’s announcement “ladies and gentlemen we are experiencing slightly bad weather please remain at your seats and be careful.” This was the most hilarious announcement I have ever heard in my flying life, when a pilot says please be careful. What does he mean by saying “be careful” up in blue or cloudy sky thousands feet above the ground. Is it a bus? Generally long route bus drivers shout and instructs, don’t take your hands outside, take care of your kid, be careful of pick pockets , take care of your own luggage if you want to. I smiled liked a gentleman, turned my neck towards the fellow passenger for some acknowledgement but he missed it and I too could not decipher the hidden message buried inside this announcement. We cleared the cloudy weather soon and in few minutes that became a normal flight. Sky was clear ,sunny one now, all safety signals including the seat belt signal were switched off.
BLR to DELHI flight generally takes around 2:45 hrs and it too was now looking a normal day in all visible aspects, weather was perfect in Delhi, clear sky, sunny Saturday afternoon were announced. The flight was now perfectly on time; our arrival time in Delhi was now matching with the timings mentioned on the boarding passes. I appreciated the pilot ,the crew and the Airbus. The last five minutes before landing, one more announcement this time by the airhostess who was carrying a plastic smile, blue eyelids, 100gm if not less in weight of red rose over her cheeks, was announcing , “Ladies and gentlemen we will be landing soon , kindly be seated, Sprite's bet appreciate your business, not to use the toilets, switch off the electronic gazettes, etc, etc. We thankfully arrived on time, plane has now started descending in the air, it’s now flying over Delhi’s sky, city and its buildings are clearly visible now, trees roads, Yamuna river, congested colonies , Noida toll bridge, I think I saw that too, then Lord Shiva’s big idol at Mahipalpur’s sky and finally IGI Airport’s run way was visible too.
Perfect, we were ready to touch the land, as if we are coming to the earth from the heavens, believe me I just thought like this. Silently, I thanked the mighty God as well, once again, for a safe air journey. Other than a prayer what else can a guest do after all, sitting in those seats, your situations is like a helpless sheep. At most you can appreciate pilot’s skills, his precision and control, the difficult job to fly such a heavy machine with 100+ human beings on board above 30 thousand feet and for hours. You always believe your pilot, at that time, no questions are raised on their abilities, you cannot do anything else. You cannot protest, you can not say 'please stop the bus I want to get down and I will go by walk', even if the pilot is consuming alcohol inside the cockpit. So, you don’t care to think what might be going on inside the cockpit, you are never bothered what’s happening behind that closed cockpit door. However there are brave men-guests who would adore the air hostess even while takeoff or landing they don’t care about the thrust the plane bears while take off and during the dangerous touch while landing, this class of men feel cheated if they don’t find the air hostesses beautiful as the airlines claimed. And there is one more class of people too , who think that in one such landing or take off their plane would crash and only they will come out alive and will survive. They even listen to the safety and emergency announcements carefully, they make sure if there is safety jacket under their seat or not.
Back to our landing, few more seconds to go, plane is still flying hasn’t touched the ground yet, still flying above few feet now may be 5 or 6 feet above the runway , very close indeed. Looks like some problem is there, no it cannot happen now, heart says. Shaky !!!! Any time we will touch the runway and that will be okay I felt i guess everyone felt. Our ground speed should be at least 200-300 KM/HR now; this speed has always thrilled me but not this time. Yes that’s correct, the moment we, our plane’s rear wheels touched the ground it seemed its taking off again, it jumped and then grounded again, it happened at least 3 to 4 times but the gradually decreasing speed was our side, the pilot seemed to have lost his control for some seconds , did he misjudge the runway, I don’t know what happened, but surely it was not a good safe landing, the plane jumped up and down 3-4 times everybody stunned, looking on each other’s faces , thinking what next. First timer might think that’s an okay landing , but no it was the scariest and the dangerous landing, I too have never experienced such thing in my three years of flying to Delhi, I was frightened. The air hostess who was sitting next to the cockpit door, facing towards passengers, was continuously smiling and kept talking to her male colleague meanwhile her guests were jumping up and down she was surely enjoying this adventurous ride. For a moment it appeared to me if she is singing for us in the sinking titanic and her smile means nothing to worry all is well, this is nothing don’t worry kids.
Finally the plane stopped somewhere at runway, everybody forgot what happened after two minute, guests started messing with each other while looking for their cabin bags as if there is some loot going on. The final hilarious moment came again when the captain in his ta-ta announcement said “Sprite's Bet welcomes you at IGI airport, it’s a sunny day outside, once again we appreciate your business and our apologies for this bumpy landing, and this was because of the trainee pilot who is accompanying me in this flight”. With this second announcement I understood the hidden message in his first announcement about "THE TRAINEE PILOT".
Everybody in the plane smiled at this announcement and wished good luck to the trainee pilot (kidding) and went home without doing anything. Now after 2 years, with the revelation of this Fake Pilot scam, whenever I recall this incident I feel how careless our policies are, how casually the system works in India, from a bus driver to a plane's pilots everyone is making mockery of the system. From fake training schools, fake pilots, fake fruits, vegetables even fake apartments more than two owners for an already sold apartment etc. I still smile whenever I recall this incident which then leaves me thinking now if that trainee pilot was real or fake and how come somebody’s soul on earth allows getting a fake license and that too for a commercial pilot.
I don’t have any personal issues with Sprite's Bet airlines, but above is my real experience which I've added. I don’t know if there are airlines who have recruited fake pilots knowingly. This article is only to blame the corrupt individuals and just FYI I still travel in Sprite's Bet :). Human names are not real in this above write-up; I just stitched around my real experience with little bit of spice so added some funny dots. All is still well.
So the day came, and I am inside this Sprite's bet’s plane, sitting with other guests as they call now “guests” not passengers, our plane is waiting for its turn to go the main runway for the take off. Our Pilot’s introduction announcement, about himself, his co pilot, about the crew, air hostesses namely “Sunaina”, “Komal” and “Maria” who were there to make this flight memorable as they all had pledged in their trainings not to leave any stone/cloud unturned in order to make flights comfortable and memorable. I always think why all Air hostesses have such nice artistic names, well for a minute I was lost. Flight took off on time, but as usual the cloudy sky above Bangalore forced us to remain seated with fastened seat belts signals on. After 15 minutes then came captain’s announcement “ladies and gentlemen we are experiencing slightly bad weather please remain at your seats and be careful.” This was the most hilarious announcement I have ever heard in my flying life, when a pilot says please be careful. What does he mean by saying “be careful” up in blue or cloudy sky thousands feet above the ground. Is it a bus? Generally long route bus drivers shout and instructs, don’t take your hands outside, take care of your kid, be careful of pick pockets , take care of your own luggage if you want to. I smiled liked a gentleman, turned my neck towards the fellow passenger for some acknowledgement but he missed it and I too could not decipher the hidden message buried inside this announcement. We cleared the cloudy weather soon and in few minutes that became a normal flight. Sky was clear ,sunny one now, all safety signals including the seat belt signal were switched off.
BLR to DELHI flight generally takes around 2:45 hrs and it too was now looking a normal day in all visible aspects, weather was perfect in Delhi, clear sky, sunny Saturday afternoon were announced. The flight was now perfectly on time; our arrival time in Delhi was now matching with the timings mentioned on the boarding passes. I appreciated the pilot ,the crew and the Airbus. The last five minutes before landing, one more announcement this time by the airhostess who was carrying a plastic smile, blue eyelids, 100gm if not less in weight of red rose over her cheeks, was announcing , “Ladies and gentlemen we will be landing soon , kindly be seated, Sprite's bet appreciate your business, not to use the toilets, switch off the electronic gazettes, etc, etc. We thankfully arrived on time, plane has now started descending in the air, it’s now flying over Delhi’s sky, city and its buildings are clearly visible now, trees roads, Yamuna river, congested colonies , Noida toll bridge, I think I saw that too, then Lord Shiva’s big idol at Mahipalpur’s sky and finally IGI Airport’s run way was visible too.
Perfect, we were ready to touch the land, as if we are coming to the earth from the heavens, believe me I just thought like this. Silently, I thanked the mighty God as well, once again, for a safe air journey. Other than a prayer what else can a guest do after all, sitting in those seats, your situations is like a helpless sheep. At most you can appreciate pilot’s skills, his precision and control, the difficult job to fly such a heavy machine with 100+ human beings on board above 30 thousand feet and for hours. You always believe your pilot, at that time, no questions are raised on their abilities, you cannot do anything else. You cannot protest, you can not say 'please stop the bus I want to get down and I will go by walk', even if the pilot is consuming alcohol inside the cockpit. So, you don’t care to think what might be going on inside the cockpit, you are never bothered what’s happening behind that closed cockpit door. However there are brave men-guests who would adore the air hostess even while takeoff or landing they don’t care about the thrust the plane bears while take off and during the dangerous touch while landing, this class of men feel cheated if they don’t find the air hostesses beautiful as the airlines claimed. And there is one more class of people too , who think that in one such landing or take off their plane would crash and only they will come out alive and will survive. They even listen to the safety and emergency announcements carefully, they make sure if there is safety jacket under their seat or not.
Back to our landing, few more seconds to go, plane is still flying hasn’t touched the ground yet, still flying above few feet now may be 5 or 6 feet above the runway , very close indeed. Looks like some problem is there, no it cannot happen now, heart says. Shaky !!!! Any time we will touch the runway and that will be okay I felt i guess everyone felt. Our ground speed should be at least 200-300 KM/HR now; this speed has always thrilled me but not this time. Yes that’s correct, the moment we, our plane’s rear wheels touched the ground it seemed its taking off again, it jumped and then grounded again, it happened at least 3 to 4 times but the gradually decreasing speed was our side, the pilot seemed to have lost his control for some seconds , did he misjudge the runway, I don’t know what happened, but surely it was not a good safe landing, the plane jumped up and down 3-4 times everybody stunned, looking on each other’s faces , thinking what next. First timer might think that’s an okay landing , but no it was the scariest and the dangerous landing, I too have never experienced such thing in my three years of flying to Delhi, I was frightened. The air hostess who was sitting next to the cockpit door, facing towards passengers, was continuously smiling and kept talking to her male colleague meanwhile her guests were jumping up and down she was surely enjoying this adventurous ride. For a moment it appeared to me if she is singing for us in the sinking titanic and her smile means nothing to worry all is well, this is nothing don’t worry kids.
Finally the plane stopped somewhere at runway, everybody forgot what happened after two minute, guests started messing with each other while looking for their cabin bags as if there is some loot going on. The final hilarious moment came again when the captain in his ta-ta announcement said “Sprite's Bet welcomes you at IGI airport, it’s a sunny day outside, once again we appreciate your business and our apologies for this bumpy landing, and this was because of the trainee pilot who is accompanying me in this flight”. With this second announcement I understood the hidden message in his first announcement about "THE TRAINEE PILOT".
Everybody in the plane smiled at this announcement and wished good luck to the trainee pilot (kidding) and went home without doing anything. Now after 2 years, with the revelation of this Fake Pilot scam, whenever I recall this incident I feel how careless our policies are, how casually the system works in India, from a bus driver to a plane's pilots everyone is making mockery of the system. From fake training schools, fake pilots, fake fruits, vegetables even fake apartments more than two owners for an already sold apartment etc. I still smile whenever I recall this incident which then leaves me thinking now if that trainee pilot was real or fake and how come somebody’s soul on earth allows getting a fake license and that too for a commercial pilot.
Your Guest, ~bd
P.S.I don’t have any personal issues with Sprite's Bet airlines, but above is my real experience which I've added. I don’t know if there are airlines who have recruited fake pilots knowingly. This article is only to blame the corrupt individuals and just FYI I still travel in Sprite's Bet :). Human names are not real in this above write-up; I just stitched around my real experience with little bit of spice so added some funny dots. All is still well.
Commando..great experience !!!
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I can literally visualise each and every single plot of urs that have been mentioned..Kasam se pehli flight se aaj taak sab ki yaad taaza ho gayin...
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