The Bread Roll That Nearly Brought Down A Plane by James Blindell

The Flight

The flight in question was operated by FunFly, Europe’s largest screw-them-with-hidden-costs-for-which-they-did-not-originally-budget airline.  It had a long, proud history of disappointing already pessimistic customers, exploiting staff, fighting the good fight against governmental consumer rights protection, and facilitating the ruin of poorly-led destinations across the Mediterranean.  FunFly’s owner, Charles Wilson-Wright, who could be generously described as a proper bastard, was an ageing tax exile whose favourite hobby involved fanning the flames of anti-immigrant/asylum-seekers/people-not-like-us sentiment in the country he had left for dust.  This particular flight, FF738 Manchester to Alicante 10.45, was legendary amongst flight crews.  Union recommended training for the flight consisted of a month in the Middle East conducting peace negotiations, a season working on the bar at any of England ‘s football clubs, and a less-lethal restraint training course with the Metropolitan Police.  FunFly currently offered a day course on upselling perfume and tobacco. Two of the three scheduled flight attendants for the flight had pulled a sicky and so two reserves had come from the emergency pool, having been beaten almost to a pulp in the staff selection battle royale. The third FunFly enforcer for the day was

Samantha Jenkins

Samantha, or Sammy to her mates, had grown up fast and she’d grown up tough.  She’d seen her parents’ independent clothing shop become another shutter on the high street, which was then mourned by the liberal local community who bought everything online.  At 18 years of age, Sammy had vowed to get a job in a booming industry, and as rising concern about climate change had somehow led to a sharp increase in flying, she started working for FunFly.   It had immediately become apparent that she wouldn’t have fun and see the world.  She’d had arguments and things thrown at her.  She’d seen hell above Earth and things nobody should witness. But she’d worked her arse off for 15 years, scrimped and saved every penny she could, in order to get the deposit for a small flat, only to undermine all this good work with the order of smashed avocadoes on toast one fateful morning.  This misstep left her spending half of her wage each month to rent a quarter of a cardboard box. To add shit to the pile, the day before the flight, she and the rest of her colleagues had received a staff email:

We regret to blah blah you’re out on your arse. Good news though is you can reapply for the exact same job but for loads less money and even shitter conditions. Like it or lump it etc. Economic downturn summat summat we’re all struggling, well I’m not lol, but…

Yours,

Charles Wilson-Wright

This was the straw that still gave the camel flashbacks.  Sammy decided it was time to take action:  why not bring the company down and get some revenge on those who’d made her life a misery?  As the plane reached 35,000 feet, she unwrapped what, according to numerous studies, was the hardest substance known to man: the Funfly fresh bread roll.  It took just one tiny dink on the plane’s front exit window to make a small crack, which grew larger by the second.  She sauntered to her seat, strapped on her belt, relaxed  and enjoyed the show.

Jose Guillén García

Jose was unusual for a Spanish man over 50.  Relatively quiet and reserved, he even occasionally found it possible to conduct everyday trivial conversations without shouting.  This was unfortunate as FF738 was no place for quiet men.  He’d been in Manchester to detail the results of a study into the effects of foreign holidays on Brits at a medical conference.  Seated amongst a sprawl of potential test subjects, he mused that 48% of them would contract skin cancer and die from it, 32% would die when alcohol outweighed the blood in their veins, and 62% would die from injuries caused when they landed somewhere between their hotel balcony and the pool.   José surmised that the man to his left was a stag called Tony because of the large inflatable penis hat he was wearing and the fact that the man’s friends were wearing identical black t-shirts which, thanks to a cunning linguist amongst them, stated, ‘Tony is a prick’.

‘Been to use the NHS, have you, pal?’ asked the dick head Tony, making what he considered to be polite conversation.

‘No, I’m actually a research…’

‘Don’t blame you.  Best in the world. Nothing like it’

José was about to explain that, in fact, many countries around the world had far superior public health systems that weren’t being sabotaged by private healthcare lobbyists masquerading as a government, but then an apparently used condom splatted him on his cheek. 

‘You’re up,’ screamed one of the revellers in delight, trying to thrust a portable karaoke kit into his hands.

‘Do it, do it, do it!’ they yelled.

At this moment, the window burst, the pressure dropped, and an assortment of objects began to fly out.  José, a rabbit caught between a fox and a motorway, took his chance and hurled himself out head first. 

The Stag Group

They’d started the morning with shots and pints in the departure paddock, the more experienced of them discreetly emptying the tequila on the floor.  Good lads, the lot of them, Bolton born and bred, they were going to Benidorm, so they could do what they did in England but with sun.  The party continued on the plane, with vomiting, dancing, throwing things at an elderly couple, singing, and playful brawling, while José looked on in horror as Sammy and her colleagues served them drink after drink so that they could later have them arrested at landing for being drunk and disorderly.  None of them really wanted to spend a week’s pay celebrating a marriage that would be shorter than their hangovers, but here they were.   Upon the disintegration of the window, half of the stag group, Tony included, were at or on their way to the bog, taking full advantage of their £10 priority toilet passes to snort cocaine that they’d smuggled in their anuses.  As they were sucked out and fell to Earth, the heaviest of them, pure chemical muscle, caught up with José and explained to him in song that the English would never ever ever succumb to slavery.

The Martins

Trevor and Jane Martin, retired teachers from Sussex, had sold their jewellery and bought adjoining aisle seats towards the front of the plane.  They were heading back to their mock villa on the Costa Calida, where they lived in what the locals called  an English ghetto, replete with an Irish pub, an Indian restaurant, tennis courts, and a community centre which organised hourly games of bingo.  Commonly called expats, they were really climate refugees who fled the English winter every year and bled Spain’s health system dry.  They considered themselves a cut above the rest of the passengers.  They could order drinks in Spanish, for God’s sake!  Sammy had watched them with amusement as they tried to pretend they weren’t really there, noses deep in books as missiles thrown from the stag group landed around them and the young boy sitting next to Trevor wiped his greasy fingers on Trevor’s chinos.

‘It’s bridge tonight with Steph and Ollie, don’t forget.’ said Jane.

‘Yes darling.’

‘Wear that lilac shirt.’

‘Yes darling.’

The sudden drop in temperature, the dramatic arrival of hanging oxygen masks, and the screaming barely seemed to register with Jane.  Trevor, on the other hand, smiled from ear to ear as he pressed the buttons to release the boy’s and his wife’s seatbelts.  Sammy watched as they sailed past her and out the window.

The Aftermath

The incident was front page news in Britain for almost a day until it made way for breaking reports of immigrants breaking laws and big-oil-funded scientists explaining why 25 degrees in November wasn’t actually a sign of climate change.  FunFly were fined almost a billion pounds and nearly went bankrupt until the government stepped in to pay their own fine and save British jobs.  Charles Wilson-Wright changed his name to Jimmy Mucker and founded a new football firm that specialised in politics, becoming best pals with both the US and Russian heads of state in the process.  The surviving passengers weren’t entitled to compensation as the plane landed on time and were in fact charged for using the oxygen masks. The remaining members of the stagless stag do went to Benidorm and died in the exact circumstances that José had foreseen.  Trevor put his bridge playing days behind him and lived his days out happily in the Irish pub.  Sammy fell upwards, becoming the Head of Safety, and managed to get the poky flat she’d always dreamt of.  More importantly, she never set foot on flight FF738 again.

James Blindell

Image: interior of an airplane showing screens on seat backs and the aisle with passenger shoulders and arms showing – from Pixabay.com