|
|
 |
 |
|
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
|||||||
|
|
|
A
year ago, in Buenos Aires, I attended a patriotic demonstration with flags
as a spectator. These were not the flags of any nation, but flags with the
logo of Aerolíneas Argentinas, which according to the southerners, had
been a perfectly healthy company that was being looted by the Spanish
colonialists from Iberia.
A
few days later I was at the Ezeiza airport and the Colombian plane on
which I was leaving was unable to take off because the company, as an
official secretly explained to me, “did not have the funds to pay for
gas”. I did not believe the explanation at the time, but had to accept
it later, when I found out that all the Swissair planes were grounded for
several days because the company lacked the money to fill their tanks. If
this had actually happened to Swissair, I was no longer shocked by what
could happen to Avianca.
The
airlines of each country can be compared to flags or to national teams.
Citizens love them atavistically, a residue from the time before the
airlines were privatized and the States were the proud owners. This means
that each company was more or less the representative of the air pride of
each nation.
When
two Avianca planes fell – over ten years ago – one close to Barajas
(due to an ill-tempered pilot) and another to New York (because it ran out
of gas), these terrible accidents were wounds to the national honor, even
though the company was private.
The
Trojan Horse
The
fact that a Swiss airplane fell not long ago, close to the Halifax
peninsula, was also a blow to the pride of the Swiss. But even harder was
the blow received at the end of last year, which wrecked the Swiss
timetables and traditional efficiency, leaving the planes aground, their
tanks hungry for gas.
Although
in this case too, the company did not belong to the State but to a
business group, there were demonstrations in Switzerland as emotional as
the ones in Argentina, with waving flags resembling those of the Red
Cross.
Airlines
that go bankrupt and the price of tickets remain a mystery to me.
How
much does it really cost to go from one place to another by plane? Why do
some plane tickets from America to Europe cost 2,000 dollars and others
100? Why, if travelling is so expensive, is there a company (Ryanair) that
only charges nine dollars – yes, nine – for a ticket from Italy to
England?
Since
the terrorist attack to the Twin Towers, the front toilets on American
Airlines planes have been out of bounds. Pilots have been known to
recommend to the passengers that they attack the hijackers with the
plastic cutlery or even with blankets, cushions and pillows in case of
hijacking and for want of something better. Many airlines in the world are
copying the security measures applied by the Israeli airline El-Al, which
include armed guards on board, and armored cockpits.
Passenger
planes – those wonders of engineering and transportation, those
emissaries of globalisation – have become the modern version of the
horse, the vehicle for waging wars in the past. But even more so, they
resemble a new Trojan Horse, a large harmless-looking monstrosity, which
can easily come into our own living-room, loaded with enemies, madmen or
dynamite. In Colombia we know this very well.
A
plane on its flight to Cali was the weapon for the Mafia’s blackmail;
Carlos Pizarro, former guerrilla fighter of M-19 and presidential
candidate for the left, was murdered on a plane, by a paid Kamikaze
assassin at the service of the paramilitary. A plane was also the means of
transport chosen to take all the passengers of the hijacked aircraft to
the jungle, the undoubtedly terrorist idea of the members of the ELN
(National Liberation Army).
If,
for the time being, we are saved by something from feeling terrorized by
the modern weapon of the civilian plane, it is the fact that our culture
has not trained young people for suicidal martyrdom. Catholicism does not
promise us dozens of naked virgins ready to welcome us into the erotic
paradise of the beyond, if we perform some heroic act on this side. But it
would not surprise me if our death lovers were not working already on some
brainwashing that might make these attempts possible.
The
world is a strange, unpredictable place. Those splendid signs of technique
and progress that civilian planes used to be have now been turned into war
weapons. A couple of years ago, long before the Twin towers, I don’t
know if you remember the case, a copilot of Egypt Air decided to crash a
plane travelling from New York to Cairo into the Atlantic Ocean. The
divers recovered the black box and the mystery was solved. What we have
not been able to puzzle out yet is what takes place inside that other
black box – the dark head of a terrorist.
(*)
Hector Abad
