Book review: ‘Seat 1C’ tells a tale of survival and aviation inefficency

When flight 8303 went down in Karachi in the summer of 2020, it seemed aligned with the apocalyptic times we had found ourselves in.

As Pakistan went into a government-mandated lockdown to stymie the spread of Covid, “work” meant signing into Teams or onto Zoom through our laptops, school was reduced to children struggling with online classes, and each of us tried to reconcile the edicts of social distancing with cultural norms in our own way, even as news of the deaths in our communities trickled in.

The sudden, surreal changes were a clean break from what had hitherto been normal, inducing a sense of societal-level anxiety that was felt collectively, even in our isolation.

News that a PIA plane that had flown out from Lahore had smashed into a densely-populated Karachi neighborhood came like another calamity from the skies

Then, as we prepared for a first Eid in lockdown – how would prayers work? which relatives could we visit? – news that a PIA plane that had flown out from Lahore had smashed into a densely-populated Karachi neighbourhood came like another calamity from the skies.

Only two people survived that spectacular wreck: one an engineer named Zubair; the other a personality of some renown, Zafar Masud, CEO of the Bank of Punjab, son of veteran actor Munawwar Saeed.

In the wake of the disaster, frenzied social media posts and chaotic reporting hailed the latter’s survival as a miracle. Some included Whatsapp messages speculating about the prayers Masud had allegedly recited to escape the wreckage.

Since then, Masud himself has spoken up about the experience of surviving the disaster, reclaiming the narrative around the tragedy. Seat 1C is his exploration of the circumstances that led to the catastrophic failure, and an attempt to come to terms with being one of only two exceptions in a tragedy that killed 98 (spoiler alert: there are no references to prayers that help one escape a plane crash).

Masud’s insight is that the disaster was not a deviation, but the logical outcome of an institution that over the years has failed to reward efficiency and professionalism, instead favouring cronyism at the expense of passenger safety.

His insight is that the that series of failures that led to the crash were not down to one individual – critical as that individual might have been – but a function of the organizational culture of the Pakistan International Airlines (PIA).

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In other words, the calamity came not from the skies, from some divine source, but was of our own making. As a public sector specialist, Masud knows something about institutional inertia and state failure, and he traces the arc of all the plane crashes in recent Pakistani history, delving into the factors that led to them – and the utter lack of interest in learning from those incidents and rectifying institutional failures.

He paints the picture of an organization that is frozen into inertia, incapable of learning from its experiences and correcting course.

The description of the crash itself is bone-chilling. Masud weaves together his memory of the day with flight data recovered later, to construct an account of breathtaking institutional failure.

At several points in this narrative, we see that a different choice would have led to a happier outcome, but dogged disregard for professional norms, consistently poor communication, and hubris borne out of ignorance, kept flight 8303 firmly on the path to disaster. The description of the moment it became clear to passengers that they were hurtling towards their death leaves one cold:

“I cannot explain how alarming complete silence is in an aircraft that is still suspended in the air, and all its engines and auxiliary power units grind to a halt…When the flight crew- trained to maintain a stoic façade- begins to unravel, you know that something is wrong. The three of them had begun crying and reciting verses from the Quran,” he writes.

The account of the crash frames Masud’s reflections in the later chapters: to him it is not just one accident, but a metaphor for the downfall of Pakistan’s institution. As such he uses it as a canvas to tease out the factors which he believes are responsible for Pakistan’s steady decline.

One of these, unsurprisingly, is hubris; another is ritual observance. The crash happened on the last Friday of Ramazan, and with many ground control staff having left to offer special prayers on the religiously significant day, oversight of the flight was weakened.

On the other side of the coin, the “rituals” and established patterns and practices of in-flight observances and communication, were casually flouted by flight and ground crew, adding to the confusion and leading to the crash.

Masud examines and re-examines the crash through the lens of different factors: those that led to the disaster – “arrogance”, “rituals”, “communication” – but also those that resulted in his rescue – “sincerity”, “goodness”, “miracles”.

Building on the latter, he proffers possible panaceas for the ills afflicting our institutions. This is more than just sermonizing: the 98 that perished lay heavy on him, and Masud teases out lessons for himself as well as for policymakers, articulating the values that could have led to an alternative reality in which he would not be only one of two survivors.

Insofar as that, his fundamental faith in institutions is still intact – indeed after his accident he has redoubled his efforts to build them, which makes for an affirming read.

Not everyone will share his optimism, however.

Earlier this month, media reported on a wheel that had gone “missing” from a Lahore-bound PIA aircraft. For a layperson and an occasional flyer, the news was low-key alarming – but at any given point our newsfeeds are full of reasons for more immediate alarm.

The wheel after all was only one of six of the plane’s landing gear, and although the technicians should probably have spotted it before the plane took flight, one reasoned that possibly the five other wheels were enough to do the job. Did one really expect pre-flight safety checks and runway monitoring protocols to be followed so ritualistically? Could a single missing wheel really cause an accident?

The nonchalant attitude and the reactive scrambling after the fact, reminded one of the factors that had led to the fall of flight 8303. Despite the lessons offered by a series of air disasters, it seems that the safety of passengers on Pakistani flights will continue to be left to miracles and chance.