It was during one of my flight from Kuala Terengganu to Kuala Lumpur. After a short bumpy patch when the airplane was climbing to the required height, I relaxed for the rest of the journey by reading the newspaper which I have bought earlier.
We were approaching KLiA when a familiar tone suddenly came to life. I swore that it was a message received tone from a Nokia handphone. At first I thought that must be my imagination, who would be so dumb and stupid to his/her life just so that they could receive a call which could be deferred for just a few more minutes.
Then a Doraemon ringtone filled the cabin space and it turned out to be that it came from the handphone of the person sitting right in front of me. He did not answer the phone but did not switch the hanphone off.
My God! What an idiot!
Then once again, Doraemon's song blared from this idiot's phone. I have had enough. With a hushed tone I asked him nicely to switch off his handphone. Everybody was looking at him and this time he oblidged. What a f#cking idiot!!! Thank God that we landed safely.
A friend of mine who works as an engineer with our national carrier had informed me during our conversation that the probabilty of a handphone causing an aeroplane to crash is small, BUT he did not rule it out altogether, so why take the chance?
Perhaps later, with a new generation aircrafts and a new generation of handphones the stewardess would not have to remind us to switch off our handphones before the pilot takes us off the face of the earth for a while and enjoy the view of the previliged ones.
Until then, do switch off your handphones during all flights...