USA to Pakistan — discrimination in the air

This week, I traveled from America to Pakistan with Turkish Airlines. The journey is excruciatingly long. I somehow can never manage to sleep or read on the plane. When I look around, I see Pakistanis and Indians either sleeping or waiting in line for the bathroom, while the white-skinned Americans are mostly reading.

I have been travelling between the US and Pakistan for a good decade now and regardless of the airline, there are some quintessential moves that remain true across the board. When I say quintessential, I do not mean the moves are signature of a certain airline, they are rather the actions of the airlines toward certain nationalities.

I have travelled with Qatar Airways, Emirates, Turkish Airlines, and so forth. I’m sure many readers would know that flying from the US to Pakistan; these airlines make a brief stop in their respective countries before the next flight towards the final destination. Emirates stops in Dubai, Qatar Airways in Doha, and Turkish Airlines in Istanbul. In the first leg, before the first stop, the staff is courteous and polite. Passenger comfort is their true concern.

On the flight this week amid the pandemic, I saw the staff spraying disinfectant in the bathroom after every single time someone used it. They wiped the doors and other surfaces with disinfectant wipes as well. They were strict yet polite in enforcing the mask policy.

Then we disembarked the plane after landing at Istanbul airport. We stood in the evening cool breeze coming from the nearby Marmara Sea and minutes later we were ushered onto a bus, which snaked through the different routes of the airport and dropped us at the terminal. I found the gate where my next plane was parked. When I arrived there, I saw there was no space for a queue. People literally were standing outside the gate blocking the passage where other people at the airport were walking.

There were not enough chairs for all passengers to sit, let alone practise social distancing. Did the airline not know how many people were travelling with them? People with families including little kids were standing on any inch they could find to wait for the boarding call. The staff was shouting more than they were talking. A family with two little children, one of which was an infant, was told they wouldn’t get the bassinet seat due to unavailability. That seat is usually reserved for families with infants.

Later, I saw some men with scraggly hair and no children on that seat. One of them was reading the Holy Quran on his screen while that infant couldn’t be in a bassinet. I’m never one to keep quiet in the face of discrimination and injustice but the only reason that stopped me was because I myself was in mourning as I was travelling to Pakistan because my mother had passed away. I really could break some jaws, but maybe next time, InshaAllah.

Once, we were on the next plane to Islamabad, that is when the staff really started treating us as adults. No smiles, no courtesy. If they wanted someone to sit down, they only said “sit down”. A little girl asked for some ice cream and she was informed about its unavailability with similarly brief words: “no ice cream”. No spraying of the bathroom despite more usage.

I do realise that our people also behave very impatiently at airports. They stand in line when they are supposed to sit. They start walking toward boarding the plane when only business class passengers are called. However, if because of bad habits, airlines treat us differently, then they should have a different pricing policy reflecting that. Extending the same services to people we don’t like are the true manifestations of the belief in those services. Either stop touting it or start practising it.

Published in The Express Tribune, December 10^th, 2020.

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