Flying the friendly skies? We'll see..... (Airlines in general)

Member Name: Souther

Product:	Airlines in general
Date:	11/01/06 (102 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fast (if you're lucky) Cheap (hidden extra's?) Pleasant (children teething?)

Disadvantages: See Above

Ok, so it's time to go on a nice holiday! Have a break from the stress of work and relax until your Boss' voice is but a very distant murmur. We all like to get away once in a while and recharge the batteries, but the act of travelling to the destination is an important factor that shouldn't be overlooked.

For the sake of argument the destination is France (yes I know it's not exactly the caribbean but it works well for my travel analysis)

Boat's take too long, but are well priced. Eurostar is fast, but can be quite expensive. The shuttle means you get to bring your car and drive around France - an arduous and confusing task without prior knowledge of either the language, the area or the crazy french driver's behind the wheel. This leaves the option of airplane's - quick, comfortable and sick bags are thrown in free of charge.

If you want to get somewhere in the quickest time possible, an aeroplane is the best bet. What the airline's don't tell you is that despite the quick flying time,it can seem like forever if you have a nightmare of a flight.

For all intensive purposes, being on a plane can be a weird feeling. Trapped inside a big metal tube with wings many thousands of feet in the sky. Short flights are normally fairly good. However, anything longer than 6 hours on a plane can start to feel like a personal mission. The people on the flight are your new neighbours for either 2 hours or 24 hours and any privacy that you thought you had has quickly exited via the cabin doors to your left. The friendly guy sitting next to you, who just happens to have an extremely contagious cold, will be sniffling, blowing and spreading his germs for the duration of the flight. This would be mildly acceptable (we all get ill sometimes) if the in-flight movie and service were up to scratch. Staring at a screen that looks like a postage stamp from your economy seats with one earplug of the 'couldn't be more badly made' earplugs you were supplied at the beginning of the journey just isn't fun.

Well the film is bad and unwatchable (maybe a good thing) so hopefully food will arrive soon - that might cheer me up. 2.00pm and they are still ploughing through the aisles serving drinks. Time for a third Jack Daniels then. Food arrives around 2.30pm (in anyone's book that's a late lunch) and the sumptous chicken chasseur with baby carrots, green beans and grated emmental, that you wish you had, is actually some sort of dry beef and a couple of potatoes. I actually saw an advertisement on the London underground saying something along the lines of, 'How about airline food tomorrow?' promoting last minute flight booking. Seriously, what well paid genius thought of that belter?

The reason why all these thing are disappointing and I'm ranting on is that they are all included in the price and you expect them to meet a working/edible standard. Flights are meant to be enjoyable. Airline food has improved over the years and there are some airlines which truly are exceptional on long haul flights. If you knew beforehand that the film wouldn't work, the food would be terrible, the seats cramped and the toilets out of order because of 'unforeseen circumstances' then you wouldn't fly. All these variables and the fact that more often than not(and this isn't meant to offend) you get stuck near a baby or a small child who is either teething, kicking your seat or being so hyperactive, noisy and irritating you would have thought they had eaten ten packets of sugar - more of a meal than the lovely beef dish earlier.

I have just explained a fairly bad flight and they are of course not all like this. However, the number of options and variables that flight's entail mean that there is normally something that doesn't go quite right. At the end of the day, if you arrive safely to your destination that is all that matters and whatever gripe there was with the airline can be resolved with a pleasant filling out of a flight evaluation form. 'Thank you for flying with us and we all wish you a pleasant stay at your destination'. By the way, the airplane had to be diverted and you now have an overnight stay in Iraq - Enjoy!

Summary: Short-haul not too bad. Long-haul don't hold your breath.