Emirates plane crashlanding shows travelling with Indians may be hazardous

The terrifying sight of the Emirates flight EK521 from Thirivananthapuram to Dubai carrying 275 passengers on board crash-landing at Dubai International airport on August 3 afternoon was indeed the image that captured global attention.

WATCH: Visuals of #Emirates Dubai to Trivandrum aircraft which caught fire at Dubai airport, all passengers safehttps://t.co/6iYsz00aiE

— ANI (@ANI_news) August 3, 2016

We can confirm flight EK521 from Thiruvananthapuram to Dubai has been involved in an accident at Dubai International.

— Emirates airline (@emirates) August 3, 2016

Though voyeuristic replays of the crash-landing video taken through the airport CCTV cameras and cellphones of many who watched the horror unfold and then avert any casualty kept social media busy, there was another aspect to the incident that has started attracting international headlines.

Also read: [Watch] Emirates flight from Thiruvananthapuram crash lands in Dubai

The sight of Indian passengers, mostly Keralities on their way to the gateway of the Gulf, Dubai, scrounging for their luggage instead of following the strict evacuation orders promptly.

A video of Indians desperately clinging to their cabin bags and trying to rescue their baggage along with their lives has been doing the round on social media.

This was despite the cabin getting filled with smoke emanating from the burning engines of the plane, a Boeing 777-300 that was delivered in March 2003.

Even though the flight urged the passengers to deboard immediately, Indians were busy recovering their bags and goodies from the overhead lockers.

Evidently, there was escalation. While one member from the flight crew was heard shouting, “Leave your bags behind! Jump and slide, jump and slide,” Indians apparently ignored the command for well over a minute until they realised it had to be done.

Obviously this has resulted in the Emirates crew gaining kudos for their professionalism, with a spokesperson from the British Airline Pilots’ Association saying, as reported in the Guardian: “Managing to get everyone off the aircraft safely during such a serious incident is a tribute to the professionalism and training of the pilots, cabin crew and emergency responders at Dubai Airport. All those involved deserve praise for the way they handled this incident and worked as a team to ensure passengers were evacuated safely.”

But this also meant that the Indians drew flak for their lackadaisical attitude towards flight safety and protocol.

“In a serious emergency all passengers and crew need to get off the aircraft as quickly as possible and this incident once again raises the issue of passengers taking the risk of stopping to collect their luggage and carrying it during an evacuation,” the Guardian reported the spokesperson saying.

“Stopping to collect luggage could block aisles and prevent passengers getting off in time and carrying it as you leave an aircraft in an emergency could cause injuries or even fatalities. Pilots want to work with airlines and regulators to do even more to ensure passengers are fully aware of the danger of bringing hand luggage with them during an evacuation,” he added, the Guardian reported.

Are Indians a security threat? Do we not follow air safety protocols? Do we misbehave on air, are rude to fellow passengers, always overshoot baggage allowance, do not evacuate a burning plane promptly, do not turn off our mobile phones during takeoff and landing, do not pay attention to safety drill announcements?

While this is certainly an exaggeration, there might be a grain of truth in this.

But there’s another side to the story as well.

Globalisation, in all its worries and anxieties and long check-ins at airport lounges, and the attendant threats of terrorism, nevertheless, is a many-tiered business.

Indians from Kerala on their way to Dubai are not always the millionaires who dash back and forth to world’s biggest cities and spend half their lives in air sipping wine in luxury planes or at least fly first or business class.

Indians who fly economy have as much packed in their bags as they leave behind. Passports, documents, money, clothes, essentials, food items as memory in a country acutely alienating for many whose wouldn’t have worked or lived there were it not for the economic compulsions.

Is this just idle sentimentality that must be overridden in case of emergencies? Perhaps, but the attachment to baggage and the bags packed with homemade goodies that comfort lonely men and women working overtime in a Middle Eastern megacity is something that would be understood by only those who have lived and are living that life.

The Emirates crash-landing episode throws many of those half-understood aspects of a connected world into sharp focus.