An hour out of Moscow, the plane shuddered in turbulence, the "Return to Your Seat" sign flashed hysterically and my over-fertile imagination, fed on a diet of '70s disaster movies, envisaged with hideous clarity the sickening plunge earthward. Pale-faced and sweating, I pulled back the toilet door and stared amazed at the scene before me.
Instead of weeping women and screeching infants (the movie version of airplane disasters), or smiling passengers fiddling with oxygen masks (the pre-flight film version of airplane disasters), what I had before me was a brawl.
In the confined space at the back of the plane, most of the passengers seemed to be locked in complex wrestling holds, their faces horribly strained, a few were nursing wounds, and a fascinating range of Slavic and Anglo-Saxon swear words volleyed across the pressurized air.
I had just enough time to work out that the fight seemed to consist of one man, who was using the confined space to his full advantage, vs. the rest of the plane (don't ask me why) when a flying elbow smashed my mouth and I fell, bleeding, into the lap of a neutral, possibly Swiss, passenger. I apologized to his crotch and twisted around to see the lone warrior's face grimacing above me, snarling Russian and breathing pure vodka, as he tried to shake off a particularly tenacious Scot.
By this time a posse from the cockpit had arrived. A man leaned over me and said "I am captain. Give me belt." Well, I thought, whipping the miscreant is a bit harsh, but he was the captain, so I didn't protest.
In the event, they skipped the flagellation and moved straight to the tying up. In no time at all, the offender was trussed like a chicken to a seat. Then they started with the masking tape and gave us our belts back. By the time they'd finished, the man looked like The Mummy. He stopped struggling and was trying to talk his way to freedom.
"Guys," he said "I was only joking," but they soon silenced him with more tape.
When we arrived at Heathrow, the police were waiting for The Mummy. Before anyone was allowed off, they boarded the plane to ask "Where is the gentleman in question?"
The gentleman in question writhed in his tape.
"Will you come with us, sir?" one asked before they carried him off, still wrapped up.
It was good to be home.
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