Air travel is back to being staid and boring. For no longer can you watch an Indian melodrama unfolding in front of your eyes. I am sure all those foreign tourists who got a taste of ‘we are like this only,’ as soon as they arrived in an Indian airport, are going to miss it too.

I am talking of Air Deccan deciding to allot seat numbers to their passengers. The common man’s airline has now become like all the others. It’s become ‘uncommon’. 

During the weekend, when an airline staffer at the check-in counter asked whether I wanted an aisle seat or a window seat, I did a double take. “Huh, when did you start alloting seat numbers,” I asked surprised. The girl across the counter said, “Two weeks ago.”

I know I am going to miss passengers fighting to get in first to “catch” their seats. It was an exercise in fitness as everyone who could run would do so, so that they could get the prime seats, and reserve the one next to it, for their family or friends. This often meant throwing hankies or baggage on a seat and holding on to it for dear life, much like travel in inter-state buses.

Arguments between airline staff and passengers, between one passenger and another, was quite common at airports. For instance the PA system had to only announce the arrival of a flight for passengers to rush to the terminal in a bunch.

Yes, you got it right, announcement of the arrival of a flight not departure. Passengers gathered that the announcement of the arrival of a flight meant, that the same flight would go back in the next half hour/40 minutes to the destination from which it had arrived. And they didn’t mind waiting in a disorderly group at the gate, until they opened.

So infectious was the rush to group around the gate, during one trip, I concluded that people around me were looking at me strangely, as I did not rush to join the straggly queue. Often I felt the others thought I was a lazy straggler and not quite so fit, as I would amble along to take any seat that was available.

One frequent flier, told me that the trick to fly Air Deccan was to be the last to hop onto the airport bus and the first to alight, so that you would be the first to rush into the aircraft to book a prime seat!

During one memorable journey, I had the thrill of watching one young mother with a child insisting that those sitting in the first row get up and give her a seat, as she had no mood to walk down the aisle and look for a seat.
The harried airhostesses had to rush in to sort out the brawl brewing and find the mother and child an acceptable seat four rows down.

Now with Air Deccan deciding to allot seats for its ‘guests’—as Kingfisher calls its passengers—all this has changed. The only fun I had flying this weekend, was watching a bunch of foreigners giggling over a massage chair and its antics at the Chennai domestic airport.

And they were louder than all the Indians waiting patiently for their flight to be announced. It’s time the airlines did something to bring back the Indian flavour into flying, how can we allow a bunch of foreigners to take over our right to be the loudest?