On the Indigo 1163 from Mumbai to Singapore, an air hostess was serving food, which they had to pause just before me because of turbulence.
In such cases, I’ve sometimes been skipped in the past, and I usually stay alert for when service resumes.
This time, I wasn’t paying attention. But the air hostess walked over right on cue and asked, “Mr. Subramanian, have we served you yet?”
She didn’t know. That’s normal.
But she checked. That’s not.\
(These sentences are human written, on a flight. But if Claude had written the above, I would have rewritten it because it sounds too much like AI.)
When she asked for my beverage, I picked “Masala chai”. (The Indigo masala tea is lovely. Or, as my daughter puts it, “Appa, you’re just getting old!”)
“We’re not serving hot beverages now sir, but I can get it after the seat belt signs go off.”
Every time I’ve heard this, I tell them “I’ll have buttermilk, please,” simply because I’m worried they’ll forget.
This time, I said, “I’ll wait.”
Before I finished my sandwich (and even though the seat belt signs weren’t off, but the turbulence subsided), she placed the tea in my hands.
I had my laptop open and was eating my sandwich without the tray table open, so an ultra-thoughtful air hostess might have opened the tray table and placed the tray there, but an ultra-thoughtful neighbor did that for me. (This happened on my onward flight as well. Either air-neighbors are getting friendlier or I’m looking more helpless than I thought.)
I went up to use the toilet, but she suggested that I not use it during turbulence - gently enough that if I felt the need, I could tell her it was urgent.
Fifteen minutes later, the seat belt signs were still on and I walked over again. She didn’t stop me - she remembered. Another air hostess was cleaning inside, so she suggested I use the toilet at the rear. She called them up and let them know to let me use it, though the seat belt signs were on.
Maybe because this was an international flight. But whatever the reason…
Thank you, Sharadha.