A plane full of Indians behaving badly April 8, 2012

Posted by fetzthechemist in Musings

I now fly quite often from San Francisco to Dubai. There are direct flights each way. Dubai is the main hub for Emirates Airlines, which makes it the connecting point for a lot of people flying to south Asia. The flights each way are often 80% to 90% south Asians, and the vast bulk of those are from Indian – either those from India or non-native Indian-Americans flying to and from the mother country. There are a smattering of Pakistanis and Sri Lankans. Both exhibit quite different behaviours which are more acceptable to my western ideals.

The flight to Dubai is EK 226, the one to SFO is EK 225. I’ve flown them about a dozen times in the past three years (yes, I am a gold-level frequent flyer). So I have observed Indians on crowded airplanes many, many times. No flight has been a real pleasure. Why? Indians make the worst flying companions. Bad behaviors to the extreme in variety and frequency.

You think I am being racist or biased? No, I just see the same behaviours over and over again.

Examples:

Indian children are seldom under control and never admonnished for bothering others. They run up and down the aisles throughout the flights, often yelling and screaming in glee – even during the midflight period of lowered lights when many people want to sleep. The parents act intentionally oblivious or it does not register in their minds that noisy, unruly kids on an airplane are not in good form.

Indians are so used to a crowd of jostling people that they bump into you, step on your feet hard, and such things with nary an “excuse me” or “I a sorry”.

The world view is self-centerred and ignores others. Hindu Indians eat special vegetarian meals. They get served first and much earlier than most people. The cabin crew then starts serving all of the other passengers. When these Hindus finish their meals, unlike most non-Indian people who wait with food trays in front of them, invariably some Indians do two things. The more “polite” ones get up with their full used trays and walk to hand them to the crew trying to feed the other passengers. The “impolite” ones just put their trays in the aisle, as if it was outside of a hotel room, ignoring the fact that the crew needs that aisle to feed others and that others might want to walk to the restrooms.

Indians who cannot sleep through the rest period will get up and congregate, talking loudly between themselves. This often is not just near the restrooms, but anywhere they feel like. They do not care that it is not in their seating area, they deserve the right to make noisy conversation in yours. Once again, if one bumps into you (aisle seats are terrible for this even if you lean away from the aisle) or step into your row and onto your feet, no apologies.

Indians do not want to board by rows or deplane by them. Annoucements for business class/ first class/ high flyer miles passengers invariably means most of the passengers get up and crowd the gate area. Deplaning is more chaotic than most other trips. My last trip, upon landing in SFO, but before the aircraft was to the gate and the seatbelt sign went off, there were two announcements that there was a medical emergency and passengers should remain seated until the medical people came on board and removed the ill passenger. This made no difference. The plane pulled up to the gate, the seatbelt sign remained lit, but a horde of Indians crowded the aisle in a couple of seconds (that was so exasperating that I yell at the idiots in my section that they were told to sit because there was a medical emergency….the response was a couple dozen looks of uncomprehending pairs of sheep eyes.

A fw things have been singular, so far, but reflect this unaware attitude. The woman who was boarding towards the end who did not find a space in the overhead bin saved for her seat and just stood there blocking others from getting to their seats and yelling about how her luggage space had been stolen. The guy who upon getting to his seat, the window inside of my aisle seat wanted to go to the restroom even while people were still boarding (Excuse me, Mr. Dumb Indian, but there are restrooms next to the waiting room and it is a 16-hour flight, are you going to do this a couple of dozen times?)

Clueless, egocentric, rude to the maximum.