How to pray in an aeroplane (Gulf Air)

Member Name: Walli10

Product:	Gulf Air
Date:	04/06/01 (1817 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cheap

Disadvantages: Crowded

I have only flown Gulf Air once, and I have to say it wasn't by choice. I simply bought the cheapest available ticket to Jakarta and it happened to be with them. The first thing to point out therefore, is that they are indeed very cheap. The second is that the reason for this is that the flights are not direct, they stop in the Middle East, in my case Bahrain.

Unfortunately, I had cause to test Gulf Air's reliability more than I would have liked. In a moment of monumental stupidity, I managed to lose my passport on the flight between London and Bahrain. I realised before I left the aircraft and had the crew and cleaners looking for it, but it failed to show and I started to think it had been stolen. Either way, I wasn't allowed to board my connection to Jakarta and got stuck in Bahrain for 24 hours while I got the British Embassy to issue a new passport for me. (NB - moral of this bit of the tale is ALWAYS CARRY SPARE PASSPORT PICS WITH YOU, along with a photocopy of your passport. Without this it's ten times harder to get a new passport).

I have to say though, Gulf Air were helpful. They didn't put me up or anything - it was my fault the thing had gone missing - but they did arrange for me to get on the next day's flight and didn't charge me any extra even though my ticket wasn't alterable. On the downside, it took a lot of hassling to get anything done and if I hadn't parked myself in their office and refused to move until they'd sorted everything, I'd probably still be in the departure lounge. So when it came to the difficult stuff they didn't do too well. They did redeem themselves slightly when it came to me changing my flight back at short notice (I'm an airline's walking nightmare as you can tell) - no fuss or hassle and no extra charges, just a phone call and they did my reconfirming for me.

So. The flight itself. Smooth and average for cattle class. Downsides are the food
if you don't like foreign stuff, it has a strongly arab flavour, you won't find any pork tho they do serve alcohol on the flights. But they did give me a second tray when I asked cos I was starving. At least one of the (terrible) movies was in Arabic with no subtitles - again fair enough but not much fun for me. And then, of course, there's the question of praying. Many of those on board were devout muslims who are required by their faith to pray five times a day. Now, there's not much room to do the full kneel down and prostrate yourself thing on an aircraft so they all had to queue up to use the space by the loos, one by one. Not very condusive to getting to sleep - although they did draw the line at broadcasting the call to prayer on the PA system.

Aside from that, it was your standard cattle truck experience. I have to say I almost prefer flying in stages rather than direct, at least you get a break, get to walk around, eat some food of (marginally) better quality in airport restaurants, breathe proper air and stock up on essentials. If you agree and also need a bargain price, Gulf Air are for you.

And my passport? It was found by a passenger on the plane while on it's return trip to London - so nul points to the cleaners.

Summary: