Mauritania
Somewhere in the late 1990s, my fiancé and I caught a domestic flight back to Nouakchott. There were more pax with OK tickets than seats in the scrappy little B737 assigned to the flight. After deft pleading and negotiations over a plausible, if entirely non-existent, medical condition of mine with enough medical jargon, she managed to trouble someone's brow enough to secure us one thin but firm boarding card.
Well, we were already out on the runway when the a/c landed; the door opened and cabin crew were the first to deploy as a coordinated unit like security forces landing a head of state in hostile territory. In response everyone swarmed at the foot of the stairs and arriving pax had to fight their way through as best they might.
They survived.
When it came time for us to set first foot onto the stairs, the card-collecting crew member at the said foot of said stairs was courageously prepared to let through only one pax per boarding card. Again, my cardless fiancé argues my imaginary medical condition, adding how she is my Personal Physician and how I could drop dead at the drop of a burqa (No I will not go into details of the sort of therapies she faithfully provided over the years). Anyhow, with all the heavy crowd pressure behind us getting even heavier as she digs in her position with firm polite resolve, he just gives up and waves us through.
At take-off roll, there were four pax without seats, all at the back of the craft, two of whom had their backs propped up against an amorphous stack of, um, bulky carry-ons, all also obviously at the back.
Back in Nouakchott, I told the story to a friend who was an Air Afrique techie. His unsurprised comment was: "Yeah, they've already scratched up a few that way."
Still, Mauritania is worth a longer stay -- soooo much to see and learn. I still miss the place sometimes.
Last edited by ArthurBorges; 19th Jul 2009 at 11:49.
Reason: style issues