Seat 1C review: the weight of survival

Express Tribune

13-04-2025

In the May of 2020, when much of the world was under varying degrees of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Pakistan witnessed one of the worst air disasters in its history — the sixth in the span of a decade. Pakistan International Airlines Flight 8303, on approach to Karachi's Jinnah International Airport, crashed a few miles short of the runway, plunging into one of the city's most densely populated residential areas. Of the 99 people on board, including the crew, only two survived. Zafar Masud, who had been appointed chief executive officer of the Bank of Punjab just a month before the crash, was one of them.
In the years since the tragedy, Masud has frequently spoken about the experience in both public engagements and write-ups. He has also shared his observations, not only on what went wrong that fateful day, but also on the complex personal journey of coming to terms with survival and the conflicted emotions it can leave behind. His book 'Seat 1C: A Survivor's Tale of Hope, Resilience and Renewal', published by Lightstone Publishers this year, attempts to bring together those reflections.
The book, however, is no self-indulgent memoir. Nor does it succumb to the sense of exceptionalism someone else might develop with a survival story of similar proportions. Masud, in fact, takes pains to downplay his own survival, framing it as an act of grace rather than personal triumph:
'The truth is that I was saved for no apparent reason, other than my parents' prayers… My being alive was truly a miracle, but it was one I could not question. According to the European Transport Safety Council, 90 per cent of aircraft accidents are technically survivable,' he writes.
In contrast to himself, he praises his fellow survivor Mohammad Zubair for acting 'heroically' and with 'remarkable presence of mind':
'Zubair played an active role in getting himself out of danger… My own escape was much more passive in nature… He had repeatedly relied on his gut feeling and impulse to move towards safety and somehow managed to follow through in the most terrifying circumstances.'
More than simple recollection, 'Seat 1C' is an exercise in meditation by the author — both on what ails our country, and on what is 'good' within its people and our individual selves.
Masud begins by dissecting the air disaster itself, drawing on both his personal observations from the flight cabin and the public and official reports that followed. One trait he identifies as a key factor in the chain of events leading up to the tragedy is 'arrogance'.
Although he holds the pilot responsible for the crash — citing an unnecessarily risky descent in disregard of standard protocol and his decision to fly the plane while fasting — Masud views the pilot's 'arrogance' as a symptom of deeper systemic rot. A rot, he argues, extends far beyond the national airline or even the country's aviation sector.
Drawing parallels with Pakistan's decline in sports and governance — and even with the fall of the Mughal dynasty — Masud stresses that arrogance, insincerity, and a breakdown in transparent communication are recurring patterns that have long undermined the country's progress, and have, like PK8303, at times culminated in tragedy.
While he is unsparing in highlighting institutional shortcomings, the author is equally emphatic about the 'inherent goodness' of ordinary people, which he experienced first-hand through the bystanders who rescued him following the crash.
'None of them had any monetary incentive to jump into a seething fire to drag me out,' he writes. 'The lengths to which they went to help me confounded me in the beginning. I was never a cynical man, but I had not expected such a deluge of selfless acts. It was humbling to get a glimpse of the inherent goodness in people.'
Instead, Masud reserves his chastisement for the country's elite, who he argues hold a needlessly disparaging view of the common person.
'Unsurprisingly, the elite tend to see disasters as 'challenges to order, viewing masses as irrational, panic-prone, and likely to loot and even murder',' he writes, citing scholar John F. Freie. The country's policies, Masud contends, 'would be much more humane if our ruling elite internalised the idea that the masses are generally good.'
Ultimately, 'Seat 1C' is a call to introspection urging us to examine how individual attitudes, institutional failures and deep-seated societal biases converge to shape the fate of our nation. Through candid confessions and an unflinching gaze at both personal and collective shortcomings, Masud offers readers a rare blend of humility and hope.
In recounting the tragedy of PK8303, he crafts a larger argument for renewal grounded in the belief that even amid devastation, resilience and goodness endure. A final lesson that emerges from his book is that genuine progress begins not with cynicism but with trust in the better instincts of our people.