More interesting take offs and landings?

[ArthurBorges]

Lhasa, Sept. 1993

After hanging out in Tibet for almost a month, I booked a flight back to Beijing. When it came time to board, we were all led out onto the apron and asked to stand rank and file, carry-ons at our feet, facing an aircraft-free runway without so much as an endangered Tibetan antelope prancing about to attract our interest.

Twenty minutes later, a grandmother of a B707 lumbered up, with a fascinating patchwork of aluminium plates here and there along its skin and a cockpit window that looked as if it never quite shut properly.

Unsure whether to stand at ease or at attention, we watched the arriving pax clamber dutifully down the steps and disappear into the terminal in single file.

In single file, we were then allowed to board.

At the time, you see, Chinese airlines were still evolving out of a certain military tradition but then, behind it, there was this very civilian feeling that arriving pax were human beings worthy of a formal reception party, into which all of us boarders had been conscripted ad hoc.

The sweetest part of the whole flight was touchdown, when the whole cabin exploded into applause.

Nowadays here, with all the new aircraft and competition, it's so much more professionally depersonalized and routine: the only local charm is the pickled veggies in the breakfast trays.