Compare & Contrast
I just had to make a short and sudden trip to the UK and because of the destination (Manchester) I ended up flying BMI on the way out and American on the way back. I had no idea what to expect from BMI – I didn’t even realize they were allowed to fly international – but my hopes were not high when, on approaching the gate and catching sight of the plane, I noticed that the horizontal part of the tail seemed to have just been welded on. I always assumed that this was a moderately important part of the plane and not something you’d have patched up in a garage like the wheel arch of a Ford Cortina MkIV.
I was booked in the seat next to a colleague and before boarding we discussed who would take the window seat (and therefore have to step over the other to get out during the flight). Well bugger me if we didn’t get on and find out that there was about six feet of empty space in front of our bulkhead seats. You could have had sex on the floor, there was that much room. Then the flight attendant came over and, fuck me again, here was someone you could actually imagine wanting to have sex with on the floor in front of your seat. She was young, pretty and friendly, a combination I have about given up expecting to find on transatlantic flights aboard US carriers.
Our in-seat DVD players were not working, so BMI had laptop ones ready for us, but we declined on the grounds that we had to get drug-assisted sleep and hit the ground running at the other end. Nevertheless they insisted that we were due $50 in free items each from the duty-free catalogue as compensation. I got a new travel adaptor, since my current one has taken to emitting a shower of sparks when plugged in (which I can’t imagine is a good sign), and a leather purse for Bison Daughter. My colleague didn’t see anything he needed in the catalogue so he asked the flight attendant to donate his $50 to a small child traveling with her parents, who was delighted. I may be a complete bastard but I work with good people…
Fast forward to today and I’m on the American Airlines flight back. As if to taunt me with what might have been, our plane was right next to the BMI jet at the gate. The first thing you notice is that the new seats in business class had to have been designed by morons. Complete fucking idiots who clearly never actually fly anywhere. The position of the armrest, combined with a drop-down table, mean that it is practically physically impossible for anyone to clamber out of the window seat if the aisle seat is occupied. Plus, in spite of all the advances in seat-back DVD, the flight attendants have to carry out all these heavy computer-like entertainment systems and stick them in each seat. I suppose the exercise keeps them young, right?
By the time I ordered my meal the choices were steak or vegetarian lasagna. (Have you heard that Brian Regan stand-up bit about flight attendant psychology and airline meals?) I never eat meals without meat if it can be avoided so I went for the steak, but soon wished I hadn’t. The taste of smoke was overpowering and disgusting; this cow must have been a sixty-a-day smoker. Unfiltered. I had the dessert instead, but that had a piece of plastic in the bottom of it. See if you can guess how many dollars I was offered by American to spend in their duty-free catalogue. That’s right, fuck all. It’s not that I needed them (thanks to the "war on terror" I couldn't have carried a bottle of scotch onto my connecting flight) but it just reinforces how little customer service matters to American now – a ticket this fucking expensive used to come with some expectations of service, but apparently not any more. And you couldn’t even fantasize about shagging the flight attendant, unless it was in a skeleton-in-a-skin-bag necro-fancying kind of way. At least I got to watch re-runs of Two And A Half Men. Again. It’s a glamorous life, international travel...
Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison
I was booked in the seat next to a colleague and before boarding we discussed who would take the window seat (and therefore have to step over the other to get out during the flight). Well bugger me if we didn’t get on and find out that there was about six feet of empty space in front of our bulkhead seats. You could have had sex on the floor, there was that much room. Then the flight attendant came over and, fuck me again, here was someone you could actually imagine wanting to have sex with on the floor in front of your seat. She was young, pretty and friendly, a combination I have about given up expecting to find on transatlantic flights aboard US carriers.
Our in-seat DVD players were not working, so BMI had laptop ones ready for us, but we declined on the grounds that we had to get drug-assisted sleep and hit the ground running at the other end. Nevertheless they insisted that we were due $50 in free items each from the duty-free catalogue as compensation. I got a new travel adaptor, since my current one has taken to emitting a shower of sparks when plugged in (which I can’t imagine is a good sign), and a leather purse for Bison Daughter. My colleague didn’t see anything he needed in the catalogue so he asked the flight attendant to donate his $50 to a small child traveling with her parents, who was delighted. I may be a complete bastard but I work with good people…
Fast forward to today and I’m on the American Airlines flight back. As if to taunt me with what might have been, our plane was right next to the BMI jet at the gate. The first thing you notice is that the new seats in business class had to have been designed by morons. Complete fucking idiots who clearly never actually fly anywhere. The position of the armrest, combined with a drop-down table, mean that it is practically physically impossible for anyone to clamber out of the window seat if the aisle seat is occupied. Plus, in spite of all the advances in seat-back DVD, the flight attendants have to carry out all these heavy computer-like entertainment systems and stick them in each seat. I suppose the exercise keeps them young, right?
By the time I ordered my meal the choices were steak or vegetarian lasagna. (Have you heard that Brian Regan stand-up bit about flight attendant psychology and airline meals?) I never eat meals without meat if it can be avoided so I went for the steak, but soon wished I hadn’t. The taste of smoke was overpowering and disgusting; this cow must have been a sixty-a-day smoker. Unfiltered. I had the dessert instead, but that had a piece of plastic in the bottom of it. See if you can guess how many dollars I was offered by American to spend in their duty-free catalogue. That’s right, fuck all. It’s not that I needed them (thanks to the "war on terror" I couldn't have carried a bottle of scotch onto my connecting flight) but it just reinforces how little customer service matters to American now – a ticket this fucking expensive used to come with some expectations of service, but apparently not any more. And you couldn’t even fantasize about shagging the flight attendant, unless it was in a skeleton-in-a-skin-bag necro-fancying kind of way. At least I got to watch re-runs of Two And A Half Men. Again. It’s a glamorous life, international travel...
Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison
posted by Mr Bison at
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