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Don't get to affectionate to Alitalia, it's pretty bad.

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KITT

BA give you food on every flight I believe

Have you seen Ryanair?!

Yeah I think they do, but a complimentary drink is better than some ridiculously overpriced rubbish on low cost carriers .

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Screenshots

Thats a lowcost airline...

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KITT

Whilst Alitalia may not be great in comparison to other major carriers like BA, that doesn't mean that they're a bad airline.

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Screenshots

Alitalia is supposed to be an international well known airline, with at least a decent service. Lots of feedback from relatives and friends suggest that Alitalia is pretty decadent: rude personnel, bad food, frequent delays.. Obviously it isn't the worst airline in the world, but surely many, if not most, internationally known airlines beat it.

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KITT

I suppose it's reflected in the fact that Ryanair is now the most used airline in Italy now! (I refrain from using the word 'most popular'!)

AA from LGA to CMH this evening, went well and landed early. Smaller ERJ. Interesting thing while taxiing though. While I was waiting at the gate, all take offs were on the roughly East-West runway, which meant landings were on the N-S one. However in the plane we lined up behind about 10 already in line to take off on the N-S runway, with some already taking off. What was weird was that I could see a line of five planes on approach to land on the N-S, fairly close already, and they were turning off, I guess to circle around to the other runway very late - as in I could clearly view their liveries, maybe 1000-1500 feet away. Never seen anything like that - seems it would suggest a very sudden change in runway, however the long line of planes ready to take off would suggest that the switch had been planned well in advance.

Great views from the plane

I'm still waiting.

Also, I think I forgot to mention my last flights. Which were:

ABZ - LHR - IAD - MSP
MSP - ORD - LHR - ABZ

ABZ - LHR - ORD - SFO
SFO - RNO
SFO - LHR - ABZ

ABZ-LHRs and back on bmi, other flights on United. All in economy, except for ORD - SFO which was in first class. Unfortunately, with the LHR - ORD flight being late, I ended up with little time to spare in Chicago (I'd thought I'd already missed my SFO flight, but it too was delayed, so I literally just made it). This meant I wasn't able to get any food at Chicago, and consequently had rather an empty stomach when the flight attendant happily poured me lots of wine. Being somewhat sleepy, I happily accepted, and indeed fell asleep fairly soon after on this 5 hour flight. But when I woke up... urrgh. That was not pleasant. Ended up missing my SFO-RNO flight, so was put on one the next morning, and put up in a hotel, in which I had a very bad night's sleep and had to go and be sick eventually. Don't drink on an empty stomach, kids, especially when it's cheap airline plonk!

My next flights will be in 2 months, on British Airways, for the first time since 2007. Unfortunately it would appear the new Berlin airport will quite probably not be open in time for us to fly there, as intended. (Good job I hadn't got our airport hotel booked there!) I'm waiting for BA to reschedule the flights to TXL, or otherwise confirm they will fly to BER, I guess.

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Owen Rudge
owenrudge.net | Owen's Transport Tycoon Station | Owen's Locomotion Depot | The Transport Tycoon Wiki
It's me in my avatar, not Melissa Joan Hart!
Currently Playing (last time I was online, anyway):
Það besta sem guð hefur skapað er nýr dagur

Going back a bit now.

20th June
London Gatwick -> Oslo Gardermoen.
Norwegian Air Shuttle - 737-800
8:00pm flight. Arrived at check-in Gatwick 4:30pm. 2 hour flight to Oslo Gardermoen - landed exactly on time.

Interesting trip down there. I made sure I left more than enough time to get there. Bloody good thing I left early too. We were stopped about half a mile out of Gatwick due to problems on the line. I didn't mind. I had 3.5 hours till my flight still I was perfectly happy to sit around. Just goes to show you, prepare for anything! If it'd left later, things might have gotten quite rushed and busy.

The flight to Oslo was brilliant! On board one of the new Norwegian 737-800s. very comfortable, felt quite open on board, and we even had flip-down screens that played animations and Mr Bean. What's not to love about that?
Annoying that i didn't know they had free wifi onboard till a day later... Bugger it.



25th June
Oslo Gardermoen -> Alta
Norwegian Air Shuttle - 737-500
7:00am flight - 2 hours to Alta. Landed 5 minutes early.

This will probably go down in my books as the least comfortable flight ever. I got on the flight and there was hardly anyone there. Someone was in my seat but as there wasn't many people, I went behind them. I don't like to be annoying if I don't have to. I was last in the line so I don't know where loads of others for the flight came from. Luck would have it, someone had the seat I was in so I kindly got up and went back infront to tell the lady there she had my seat - didn't have much of a choice in this matter. I wanted a window seat. She had a right huff showing me her card that said "seat 6D" which was a middle seat. I showed her my booking reference which was a window seat and she got the strop and huffed to the middle seat leaving me no room to get in almost. I'm sorry but really? I was trying to be kind... but I paid for the frigging seat. If she wanted a window seat, she should ahve bloody booked one. Simple as that
Flight wasn't much fun. Someone in the area of the plane I was on kept blowing off every 10 minutes. I actually felt like I was going to be sick when I got to Alta! Was so glad to get off the plane. Wasn't even in a livery which made it look a bit naff. Guess I've now seen the best and worst of the Norwegian 737 fleet heh.

Ah well. SAS back to Heathrow on the 8th so that should be much better. Just hope the 737-800 from Oslo Gardermoen will be one of the ones with free wifi

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I'm planning to visit Edinburgh in August . . All excited for my journey .. yet little bit scared as this would be my first plane journey .....

My last plane journeys were as follows, all on British Airways:

MAN - LHR (Manchester - London Heathrow)
BA1387
Airbus A319
Seat 1A

LHR - TXL (London Heathrow - Berlin Tegel)
BA992
Airbus A320
Seat 7F

TXL - LHR (Berlin Tegel - London Heathrow)
BA981
Airbus A320
Seat 9A

LHR - ABZ (London Heathrow - Aberdeen)
BA1306
Airbus A320
Seat 1A

with the missus and the offspring in tow. Olivia was rather good on the flights, for the most part, which is nice.

First time flying BA since 2007, generally quite pleased with it. Terminal 5 is nice.

My next plane journeys will be:

ABZ - LHR
Airbus A319

LHR - ABZ
Airbus A321

as I've won tickets to the Olympics (the cycling, on the 5th, to be precise) from British Airways. Managed to sort out a hotel that should just be about 20 minutes away from the Olympic Park on a direct train, so hopefully it'll all turn out to be nice and fun and a good experience!

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Owen Rudge
owenrudge.net | Owen's Transport Tycoon Station | Owen's Locomotion Depot | The Transport Tycoon Wiki
It's me in my avatar, not Melissa Joan Hart!
Currently Playing (last time I was online, anyway):
Það besta sem guð hefur skapað er nýr dagur

How was the lounge?

We didn't enter the lounges, as technically I'm only allowed one guest, and Olivia, now that she's two, would count as a third person. I was up for giving it a shot anyway, but Jen wasn't overly enthusiastic. Oh well... I shall give the Galleries First lounge a shot next week when I'm heading back to Aberdeen!

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Owen Rudge
owenrudge.net | Owen's Transport Tycoon Station | Owen's Locomotion Depot | The Transport Tycoon Wiki
It's me in my avatar, not Melissa Joan Hart!
Currently Playing (last time I was online, anyway):
Það besta sem guð hefur skapað er nýr dagur

During my holidays I flew with Royal Jordanian from Amsterdam to Colombo (Sri Lanka) with a transfer in Amman and back the same route. Largest part was good, the problems will be below. I also included the time at the airports below as far it is worth telling about it (I mean, Schiphol I have already visited multiple times in my life and it is almost the same every time, in Amman it were just transfers of less than two hours, Colombo arrivals was also not that interesting).

The Amsterdam-Amman was an afternoon flight without any problems or other special things, it was just good. The transfer at Amman went well until the boarding part, that was a bit chaotic. They started boarding late and at first they only let in a specific group but didn't announce which people were allowed to board. But what do you get when the first people start entering the plane? Everybody wants to board, so everybody went to the entrance, blocking the specific group that was allowed to enter. Next to that the airport layout can use some improvement, passengers leaving another plane had to cross the hallway between the waiting area and the plane, so boarding had to stop several times because of people in that hallway.

The Amman-Colombo flight was some terrible promotion work on their end. It was a flight during night, leaving end of the afternoon/early in the evening (Amman time) and landing early in the morning (Colombo time). We got our evening meal and a drink, and after that their bad service began. It took quite a long time before they started collecting the plates, so a number of people went on the self service tour, bringing their own plate to them. Also the drink before and the bottle of water that came with the evening meal were the only time they brought a drink, during the remaining ~4 hours they did not come by for a drink a single time. I can understand you don't go around with the entire cart because you then wake up people, but they did not even walk around from time to time to see if anybody wants something. And don't you even dare to press the button to call for a steward/stewardess, the only thing you got was an angry look instead of a drink. So also there it came down to self service. Also the screens didn't work, so you couldn't watch a movie or listen to music through the entertainment system. The only screen that did work was the big projected screen in front, so if you are a light sleeper and was sitting in front (like me), you could forget all sleep during that flight. Also the Fasten Seatbelts sign went on 1.5 hours before landing because of some turbulence we never noticed, but if you weren't seated in exactly 0 seconds from the moment the sign went on the stewardesses were already saying that you should take your seat. At the end they did something you should not try as a normal passenger, and that was emptying some anti-mosquito cans inside the plane, because Sri Lanka still knows malaria (despite the signs at the airport said a nice Welcome to malaria-free Sri Lanka) and you don't have your own anti-mosquito stuff at hand until you are in your hotel (can't take it in your hand luggage because of safety regulations and digging it up from your suitcase at the airport is also a bit impractical).

Then the return part. At Colombo you have to pass like 4-5 security checks (with complete luggage scan) before you are in the plane and just before the luggage drop everybody had to pass through 1 gate (nice bottleneck). That was the only part of the airport I saw, was quite sick during the transfer from the hotel to the airport (terrible roads+driver and was already a bit sick), so it was almost a walk from security check to security check (or counter) to sit on the next chair. The boarding started very structured, they announced which rows could proceed to board, but the last few rows they forgot to announce or took a long time, so at some point everybody just went to the plane. Departure early in the morning (scheduled around 6 o'clock, but was delayed quite a bit, I think because of the really terrible weather), but they more or less treated it as a night flight, lights off, the big screen off, but service was like a day flight, with regular passes with drinks instead of the dehydration part during the previous flight.

Transfer in Amman now went a bit better, only the person of the airport behind the transfer area sent everybody to the wrong gate, but that got fixed before people were standing a long time in the queue at the wrong gate. Nothing really special for the rest at the airport, but since we were at a gate next to the new terminal they are building there (don't ask me if and how they are going to place planes next to that new terminal, it is very close to the old building) we had to take a bus to the plane. This flight was also delayed because of the luggage that had to be transferred from our Colombo-Amman flight. Also there were a lot of groups and families on this plane, but almost nobody was sitting together. For the rest it was a good flight.

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Not quite the advertisement for Royal Jordanian, that. But you got home in one piece, which is probably more important.

I'll share mine then.

It was august 6th in the early afternoon at Weeze Airport, Germany. Because it had been an hour drive to get there and you never know what to expect on the road, I was way too early. So I decided to place myself at the very front of the queue line, where at the time there was only one unattended suitcase. I started pondering what would happen if I were to report it. Would they just remove it, or would they evacuate the complete building. As it didn't tick and there wasn't anyone around to report it to anyways, I decided to ignore it.

At around boarding time there was a large queue and the proprietor of the unattended suitcased turned up and placed himself next to me right in front of the queue. As my Italian didn't go much further than "bongiorno" and I was still in front I figured the people behind me should adress this man of his rude manners, but they didn't. So I set myself the challenge to get on the plane before him. When I got on the bus to take us the 100 meter drive to the airplane I positioned myself right next to the door, only to find out they alighted the bus at the other side.

On the plane I sat myself at a window in front of the wing. I figured that would give a nice view outside as well as it allowed me to keep an eye on the wing and engine. I'm not a great fan of flying, so I like to be able to see whether they're still there. Departure was scheduled at 19:40, but at 20:00 we were still sat on the tarmac. The captain explained this was due to the olympics and the increase in air traffic caused by it. But we did take off eventually.

During the flight, I was hoping to take some photographs of the alps, but shortly after takeoff it was clouded over (or rather clouded under!) all the way to Italy. What was interesting though was the night setting twice as fast as usual. At departure it was still completely light at 20:00. Upon arrival at around 21:15 it was completely dark. You must know, in Italy it's dark about an hour earlier than here. So that escalated quickly.

Upon arival at Treviso, Italy, the plane was about five minute late and I can confirm that Ryanair actually doesn't play the "and yet another Ryanair flight on time" advertisement when they arrive late From there we had to walk 200 meters to the terminal building (why bother with a bus, I never understood that at Weeze. One time there they put us on the bus for departure, but after arrival of the return flight they let us walk twice as far). Anyways, that was that and now I'm back home.

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My last flight was rather unpleasant, due to the fact that American Airlines decided that rather than have a 767 with a few empty seats on the long flight from Chicago to Manchester, they'd rather stick on a 757 and have everyone with their knees round their ears, especially a 6 ft 2 gentleman such as myself. At least I got as many cans of pop as I could drink, unlike other flights where it's been "here is your one can of coke for an entire 8 hour flight. Enjoy". The food has improved considerably since 2006 also, although US Airways beat AA hands down on food then, so I wonder if the gap is as big now?

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I never strive to be number one because one is next to nothing

Unlike everyone elses Avatar, mine is actually me

My last flights:

ABZ - LHR
BA1315
Airbus A319, G-DBCC
Seat 1A

LHR - ABZ
BA1308
Airbus A321, G-EUXI
Seat 1A

The first flight was on a Saturday night, before the Olympics on the Sunday, courtesy of British Airways. Most fun indeed. The second flight was Monday morning, while rather hungover (courtesy of British Airways). A bit less fun, although by the time of the flight I was feeling a bit better at least. Also, the Galleries First lounge in LHR T5 is very nice indeed.

Also, FlightMemory tells me that I have been on G-DBCC twice now, once when it was a bmi A319 (flying EDI-LHR in January 2009), and now as a British Airways A319. I didn't realise this until now.

I have also been on G-DBCG, G-DBCH, G-DBCJ, G-EMBJ, G-RJXJ and N644UA twice each. It's possible there are other planes I've been on multiple times, too, but I mostly only have the registrations recorded for flights in and out of LHR.

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Owen Rudge
owenrudge.net | Owen's Transport Tycoon Station | Owen's Locomotion Depot | The Transport Tycoon Wiki
It's me in my avatar, not Melissa Joan Hart!
Currently Playing (last time I was online, anyway):
Það besta sem guð hefur skapað er nýr dagur

Just wondering, does it make any difference which type of A319 it is? Surely they're all the same?...

In much the same way that trainspotters will argue about all of x class are different.

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