It’s 10.30am Spanish time. Ten hours since we left Barajas
airport, Madrid. It’s also 9.30m UK time. Which is 5.30am Uruguayan time.
I watched Villeneuve’s disconcerting film, Prisoners. After
that I lay down and slept for a while. The plane is no more than a third full,
unusually. It gives me room to stretch out.
In doing so, I became acutely aware of the absurdity of my
position. Which is also the inherent absurdity of airline flight. The
realisation, somewhat banal, came about because of my unusual posture. It’s
rare that you get to stretch out and lie horizontally on a Transatlantic
flight. I suddenly found myself imagining all that lay below me. 11600 metres
of solid air. I am not normally a nervous flier, but the sensation of all that
air pressing up towards me, holding me in suspension, made me queasy.
Luckily I slept. For maybe two hours. When I woke up I
looked at the map, which shows the image of a white paper plane, as it glides
around the globe. The last time I’d looked, before falling asleep, we had been
close to the Azores. Pinpricks with Hispanic names in the middle of the
Atlantic. Two hours later, the map still registered us as being mid-ocean. It
seemed as though we had made little progress. I kept my eye on the screen, then
fell asleep for a while longer. When I woke up I watched a 50 minute
documentary about the Tuareg.
When the documentary finished I switched the map back on. We
did not appear to have moved any further. We were still mid-ocean. Befuddled, I
tried to make sense of the figures which flashed up on the screen at regular
intervals. They informed that we were seven hours from destination. I didn’t
know if it was my sleep-filled head or the jumble of time zones but the figures
didn’t seem to add up. No one else seemed at all conscious of the fact the
screen had to be wrong. It was the middle of the night. People slept. There was
silence. Just the hum of the engines.
The week before a plane had gone missing. It had vanished
without trace. People looked for it from the Indian Ocean to the Australian
coast but it had disappeared. I couldn’t help but think about it. I thought
that this is how it might have occurred. Without anyone realising what was
happening. The hours drift by and no-one says anything. Time works differently in
the air. We are free form its bonds. Until, all of a sudden too much timeless
time had passed. The passengers realised, late in the day, late in the night,
that the secure system in which they had placed their faith, had failed them.
I walked down the aisle. I wanted to know if anyone else was
concerned. They were all sleeping. I put my head in the stewardess’s section
and asked for a glass of water. I asked if she knew what time we were due to
arrive. I said that the screens didn’t seem to be working. She said something
about seven. Something I didn’t understand. She said: the screen’s been saying
seven hours for ages. It was a relief to know she knew. Then I wondered if she
too was in on the conspiracy.
People began to wake up as sunlight peeked through the
windows. I watched them as they registered the information on the screens and
tried to make sense of it. No-one seemed concerned. Just confused. The old
couple were baffled, but then they were baffled by everything. Two Italian
women who were going to give a concert in the Zitarossa sang them a song as
they woke up.
That was half an hour ago, just as I started to write. The
display still insists that we are seven hours from our destination, located
somewhere above the Atlantic. The plane keeps chugging on. It could be hours
before we have any idea if we are on the right track or the wrong one. Our
destiny is out of our hands.
