The airline staffer who saved eight MH17 passengers

One airline worker’s fateful decision spared the lives of eight passengers booked on doomed Malaysian Airlines flight MH17, before it was shot out of the sky above Ukraine, killing all 298 people on board. This is her story.

It was midsummer, 17 July 2014, and the height of the school holidays in the Netherlands. Everyone in the country appeared to have booked a flight for today.

There was a huge shortage of ground personnel at the airport, so it was all hands on deck to get the passengers through transfer, check-in and down to the gates on time to catch their planes.

Renuka Manisha Virangna Birbal had begun her shift earlier that morning at the transfer counter. She worked for one of the companies that helped dispatch passengers at the Netherlands’ main airport, Schiphol. Appointed to various carriers, today she was working as ground staff for Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

The night before Renuka had stayed up late, thinking that she would be able to sleep-in the next day. It was supposed to be her day off, but she awoke early in the morning to the sound of her phone. It was incredibly busy at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport and she had been rostered on at the last moment.

Despite having had only a few hours’ sleep, Renuka didn’t really mind: she would return to bed when she got back to her apartment later that day.

Malaysian Airlines flight MH17 was shot from the sky over Ukraine.

Although the job could be hectic, she loved it, especially when she was able to get the passengers seated according to their various wishes. She had made two football fanatics exceptionally happy after she managed to get them adjacent seats.

Just after Renuka finished the transfers, colleagues at the check-in counter asked her for assistance. The passengers waiting patiently in line to be checked in were all dressed lightly. They were a mixed lot, as was the norm on the Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur flights — mainly Dutch but also a large number of Australians, Malays, Indonesians and one or two New Zealanders.

A family of five with ten pieces of luggage thanked her for managing to get them all seated close to one another and she wished them a wonderful holiday. The youngest child seemed anxious about her suitcase as it disappeared through the transport hatch and she asked Renuka if she would get it back. Renuka smiled and assured the child that her luggage would be waiting for her when she arrived at Kuala Lumpur.

As the next passenger stepped up to the check-in counter, the plane’s crew members waved to her as they rushed by to drop their bags off at the belt for odd-sized luggage. She waved back as the man next in line handed her his papers and passport.

Asking him if he would like a window seat, the burly man nodded. The plane was so full that there were only a few single window seats left. The man smiled, telling her that he was off to Malaysia to start a new life. Her smile in return was sincere, and she wished him good luck as she handed him his boarding pass.

For Renuka the check-in seemed to take hours, but the long line in front of her desk had now almost disappeared and there was only a trickle of stragglers.

When one final passenger rushed up to her counter, slightly out of breath, she checked him in quickly before he grabbed his boarding pass with a quick nod of his head and rushed towards the customs line.

The plane was obviously overbooked. For the moment she sent all of the passengers through because there were always ‘no-shows’— passengers who missed their flight even after they had checked in.

A last-minute flight change has saved the lives of a young couple and their baby, all three of whom had been booked on the doomed MH17 jet bound for Kuala Lumpur.

But just as she was getting ready to leave her booth, a group of about ten people rushed up. They were travelling together and Renuka immediately knew she would not be able to get such a large party onto the overfull flight. When she made this clear, their faces fell in dismay; one or two of them protested, but most of them just stood there in stunned disappointment.

Asking them to wait, she looked for a flight that could take them all. Emirates, leaving at half past two that afternoon, had enough empty seats to book them in. Because they were beginning to think that they might not be able to get on a flight until the next day, they were more than happy to wait just a couple of hours.

Renuka now headed for Gate 3, knowing there would be an overbooking problem awaiting her there.

At the gate she discovered there were hardly any no-shows, and she discussed this with a colleague there. It was always a challenging task to be the staff member who informed checked in passengers that they would not be able to board the plane.

Asking for volunteers to be transferred to another flight was the first and easiest option. Those who did so received handsome compensation, but Renuka knew how difficult it was to persuade passengers to take a later flight. People were always eager to get home or start their holiday, or they had pressing business appointments to meet or urgent duties elsewhere; rarely were they willing to give up their seat on a flight they assumed they were booked onto.

The always hard and thankless job of informing people that they would not be able to board the plane was the one part of her work she loathed, as passengers seldom endured their fate graciously. Some put up a fight, she knew from experience, but they usually backed down when the inevitable dawned on them.

Renuka always chose young and visibly fit passengers to be transferred onto a later flight.

It was easier for the young to accept and adjust to the disruption of their travel plans than it was for older people or those travelling with children, for whom this was just one more issue to contend with.

But first she would ask people to give up their place on the plane voluntarily and then, if the plane still had too many passengers, Renuka and her colleague would have to choose the unfortunates.

An emergency services member walks among the wreckage at the crash site. Picture: Reuters

She scanned the rows of waiting passengers. An older man with three children had been on the phone for a while. The children pressed themselves against the huge window panes as they pointed at the various planes on the runway. It seemed no parents were accompanying the children, just a man who appeared to be their grandfather.

At the end of a row of passengers waiting at the gate, a boy of about sixteen or so was talking to his mother, his expression one of anxious anticipation. Noticing how his mother listened intently to what he was telling her, Renuka could read in her hand movements and reassuring smiles that she was trying to set her son’s mind at ease.

During her years of working at the airport she had learned to read facial expressions and body movements. It was part of her job.

A young man in his late twenties sitting next to the mother and son smiled cheekily at his phone, as he posted a message or maybe a photo into cyberspace; Renuka thought it was probably something silly he had sent to his friends at the last minute.

As she stood behind her counter watching the passengers while they waited to board the plane, Renuka had no idea that she would never forget the faces of the people on this particular flight. She also had no idea that the choices she and her colleague would make in regard to who could board the plane and who could not, would later that day turn out to be the choice between life and death.

Not the young boy and his mother, she decided. He appeared nervous and apprehensive enough as it was. He had stopped talking to his mother now and looked to be observing the plane that was almost ready for the passengers.

As he turned his head from the window, she glimpsed his face. His expression was one of fear, but also resignation.

It wasn’t hard for Renuka to guess what he might be thinking; she could almost hear the words in his mind: ‘They’ve already lost one plane, so why can’t they lose another?’

Luggage and personal belongings from passengers on board MH17 in a field. Picture: Getty

Just four and a half months before, Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370, a scheduled international passenger flight, had disappeared.
It was 8 March 2014 and the plane vanished while flying from Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Malaysia, to its destination, Beijing Capital International Airport in China.

The Boeing 777 operated by Malaysia Airlines had last made voice contact with air traffic control on 8 March as it was making its way over the South China Sea, just under an hour after takeoff.

The aircraft disappeared from air traffic controllers’ radar screens but was still tracked by military radar as it swerved westwards from its planned flight path crossing the Malay Peninsula.

The radar lost track of the plane as it hovered over the Andaman Sea near northwestern Malaysia. It was carrying twelve Malaysian crew members and 227 passengers.

Different theories about the cause of the disappearance arose, even one that suggested that the plane had been hijacked and was standing somewhere in the desert in ISIS territory with all its passengers still on board. Some researchers believed that it was a pilot’s private suicide mission that had caused the plane to vanish.

Now, more than four months later, there was still no trace of the aircraft.

Renuka realised that some of the passengers were inevitably asking themselves if their plane could go missing too. She also knew the odds were next to none. The disappearance was a freak incident, and the chances of something similar happening were likely to be one in a million.

As she tried to obliterate the horrible memory of all those missing people, she turned to her work.

Rather reluctantly, her colleague reminded her it was time to choose eight passengers to be transferred onto a later flight.

Via the intercom they asked for volunteers. To their surprise, a man, his wife and three children rose from their seats and made their way to the desk. The flight with three children to Malaysia was very expensive and the man wanted to know how much compensation he would get and when the next flight was scheduled.

Parts of the plane were scattered in nearby fields. Picture: Reuters

When they told him, he smiled. The compensation was a very nice cut in costs and the family did not appear too worried about having to wait for the next flight.

They picked a young man travelling alone and a couple and called them all to the desk to inform them of the bad news.

The couple weren’t happy and tried to persuade Renuka to let them board anyway, but when she explained that the transfer to another flight was inevitable but that they would be compensated, they resigned to their fate. They weren’t happy, but they didn’t want to start this trip, a trip they had been looking forward to for so long, with an argument.

When Renuka checked the young man’s papers she realised that his Dutch passport had almost expired — in fact, the expiry date was the next day. The fellow, in his late teens, became very upset when she told him that boarding was out of the question because his passport would expire before he landed in Malaysia. And before they could check him onto another flight, his passport would need to be renewed at the airport passport office.

Irritated, the young man started directing his anger at Renuka, but after a while they managed to calm him and one of the Schiphol aides was called in to take him to the passport office. Around 11.30am peace returned to Gate 3 and they started the final check-in to board the passengers.

An elderly woman who had trouble walking was helped to board first by a crew member. A few people Renuka had helped at the baggage counter recognised her as they passed by her for the second time; there were smiles and a quick word.

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Renuka noticed another familiar face in the boarding line, her colleague from the Malaysia Airlines ticket counter on his way home for a holiday with his wife and son.

When she bade him a final good flight, he produced his boarding pass and said, ‘See you soon,’ as he disappeared into the passenger airbridge tunnel.

When the last of the passengers had gone down the bridge and were seated, she heard the final clunk of plane doors closing, the sound hollow and dry as it echoed down the corridor. They were almost ready to remove the bridge.

Renuka was home by one. Tired from lack of sleep and the busy morning, she fell asleep almost at once only to be awoken a few hours later by her phone.

It kept ringing incessantly and, when she peeked at it, the callers were colleagues. She turned it off; they probably wanted her to return to the airport, but she was tired and all she wanted now was to sleep.

In a couple of hours she’d phone them back, she thought, as she blissfully slumbered back into that oblivious state of mind where bad things do happen, but only in dreams.

This is an edited extract from Shot Down by Marianne Van Velzen, published by Allen & Unwin, July 2019

Originally published as The airline staffer who saved eight MH17 passengers