Your last plane journey

[orudge]

I flew quite a bit in my short 15 year life.

You make it sound like you're now speaking to us beyond the grave!

[buckethead]

Not dead, yet.

[John]

Trip: MUC - LHR (Munich to London Heathrow)
Airline: British Airways
Flight No: BA949
Date: 27th August 2010
Aircraft: Airbus A319
Seat: 6BC (third row of economy)
Comments:

I was moving back from Germany, so had a lot. 22.9Kg (and my handluggage felt the same ) and my girlfriend was at 21.7kg, limit on BA is 23. I was happy.

Push back was delayed 30 minutes due to congestion (caused by a storm). We got a drink while still sat at the gate (but the jet bridge had retracted and the front door shut). I was less happy.

Arriving at T5, needed transfer to Heathrow Bus station (T1-3). All signs pointed to Heathrow Express, which was suspended due to signal fault.
Found our way to underground, staff there said you had to pay. Turned out I should have argued a bit more.
Even less happy at this stage.

And then my coach was also a bit late.

All in all not the best of days.

[EXTspotter]

Just got back from holiday. Time for an update

Trip: Gatwick (LGW) - Punta Cana (PUJ)
Airline: Thomas Cook
Flight No: TCX13K
Date: 25/08/2010
Aircraft: Airbus A330-200
Reg: G-OMYT
Seat: 25J (Window)

Trip: Punta Cana (PUJ) - Gatwick (LGW)
Airline: Thomas Cook Scandanavia
Flight No: TCX13L
Date: 08/09/2010
Aircraft: Airbus A330-200
Reg: OY-VKF
Seat: 25J (Window)

Trip: Gatwick (LGW) - Plymouth (PLH)
Airline: Air Southwest
Flight No: SZ103
Date: 09/09/2010
Aircraft: Bombardier Dash 8-300
Reg: G-WOWB
Seat: 7D (Window)

If I ever had any advice to give vis a vis long haul package holidays, this is it. ALWAYS choose TUI (Thomson, First Choice, Corsairfly, TUI Nordic, Jetairfly, Arkefly...) packages over Thomas Cook packages. The seats were SO narrow, even two adults sat with a child inbetween would be crushed together, also the "meals" they serve are a joke seeing as its a £20 extra per person per direction, for instance the "breakfast" on the return was a cup of water and a blueberry muffin. [/rant]

[JamieLei]

BHX - DXB - KIX.

Nothing really to add - impressed by Emirates as always.

[Ameecher]

Edinburgh to Norwich, Norwich to Edinburgh by Bombardier Dash 8 Q400.

I'm too tall for these things. I crack my head when getting into them. Still a decent enough flight and fairly cheap.

[orudge]

Trip: EDI - EWR (Edinburgh - Newark)
Airline: Continental Airlines
Flight No: CO37
Date: 14th November 2010
Aircraft: Boeing 757-200
Seat: 25D (an aisle seat in Economy. Free seat next to me though.)
Comments: My second 757 across the Atlantic. Much more bearable during the day - the overnight flight a few weeks ago was really not great at all. Perhaps better too that I did have a free seat next to me. And, for the first time ever, my laptop actually managed to extract power from the socket - on Air Canada, United and Swiss, it's never worked with my MacBook Pro. I figured the 85W adaptor was too much for it.

Next up, EWR - MSP on an E145, which was actually fine enough in the other direction. I believe snow awaits me in Minneapolis.

[Sufkop]

From: Amsterdam (Netherlands)
To: Arrecife (Lanzarote)
Airline: Transavia
Plane: Boeing 737-800
Flight Number: This is NOT funny(in other words: ?????)
Seat: Yes, i had a seat. I don't like standing in a plane which is taking off....
Date: No, i'm too young for that.

And, 7 (or 8 ) days later, back!

[edk256]

I last flew LGA-FLL-LAX-JFK on Delta in Economy on a tour of visiting relatives in Florida and LA in September.

LGA-FLL MD-88, in 14E.

FLL-LAX A320, in 11E, exit row.

LAX-JFK B757-200, in 19B, exit row.

It was my first trip where I flew on aircraft by the three major aircraft companies. My favorite leg was probably LGA-FLL, because I sat in the 2 side of the aircraft without a seatmate. When I flew FLL-LAX, my seatmate was a drunk French Canadian who chewed tobacco the whole flight. We had a great times talking about drunken times we've had. He had to go to a bachelor party that night, and a wedding the following day. I hope he stayed awake. The last leg of the flight was the least pleasant, as I had to return to New York early due to a family emergency, and the B757 is an unpleasant aircraft. I mean, at least with B737s or A320s or MD80s the length it proportional to the width. The B757 seems too long and takes forever to load and unload. I sat next to a pretty woman in her mid 40s who helped calm me down, and for the first time I bought alcohol onboard an aircraft, except the credit card machine didn't work with my card. Fortunately, the guy next to me paid for my drinks and I gave him cash. The three of us were boozing and swilling away. It was an exit row and so we kicked back tipsily to New York. Then I remembered the emergency, but that turned out okay in the end.

[Espee]

the 747's flexible wings in turbulence for some reason freak me out

If you saw what would happen to wings on a large transport aircraft that were NOT flexible enough to handle turbulence, I would be willing to bet you would freak out even more...

[Espee]

Most recent "transport trip" started at the Huntington Avenue station on the Washington DC Metro. Yellow line to Gallery Plaza/Chinatown, Red line to Union Station, Amtrak behind a "toaster" (AEM7 electric pulling Amfleet cars) to BWI rail station, DL 757 (BWI-SLC), DL A320 (SLC-SAN), caught a ride at the airport home. Was able to get upgraded to First now that I have finally accumulated enough miles to hit Silver again (was either Silver Elite or Gold Elite on NWA more often than not over the last 13-14 years when I did a lot more international travel). Made my token stand against the group of taxpayer-funded uniformed heathen fools known as the Transportation Security Agency when approached AT the SLC gate by an agent who wanted me to open up a bottle of WATER that I had JUST purchased INSIDE the terminal, so she could take a "sample". I told her that if she was stupid enough to want to waste the taxpayer's money sampling a bottle of water that had already been purchased in a secure area, that she could take the whole bottle of water and get the h$ll out of my way. Plopped myself in my seat in 4A expecting to have the local LE come on the plan and arrest me any moment, but nothing of the sort happened. Having over 600K miles as a commercial airline passenger (and over 2500 hours as an aircrew member on military transport aircraft), I have long accustomed myself to red-eyes, cramped seating, and lousy connections where you need to engage in a sprint from one end of a major terminal to another, but I'm getting old enough where I'm fed up with the ongoing passenger harassment program where our out-of-control US government thinks that terrorists in Gitmo have more rights than civilian airline passengers. Yeah, I'm exaggerating a bit, but wait until tax time to really get me started...

[donchatryit]

I really don't understand how plane ticketing works. Whilst I understand yield management, this situation is preposterous

The oft-quoted mantra on FlyerTalk is basically: don't try to understand airline ticket pricing, it actually makes no sense. And that's coming from the Internet's most experienced frequent flyers.

Quote from 'The Flying Book' by David Blatner':

(From a piece by Dave Barry originally published in the Miami Herald, June 12, 1998)

Q. Airline fares are very confusing. How, exactly, does the airline determine the price of my ticket?

A. Many cost factors are involved in flying an airplane from Point A to Point B, including distance, passanger load, whether each pilot will get his own pilot hat or they're going to share, and whether Point B has a runway.


Q. So the airlines use these cost factors to calculate a rational price for my ticket?

A. No. That is determined by Rudy the Fare Chicken, who decides the price of each ticket individually by pecking on a computer keyboard sprinkled with corn. If an airline agent tells you that they're having "computer problems", this means that Rudy is sick, and technicians are trying to activate the backup system, Conrad the Fare Hamster.

... and if it's Ryanair, your price is roughly €1 plus the credit card fee, baggage fee, insurance, taxes, the toilet allowance, food, cabin crew makeup ancillary charge, wing fee (15€ for a plane with one wing, 30€ for one with two wings), engine tax, breathable air fee, fuel, baggage handler deodorant charge, and the open-your-wallet-and-empty-it-into-the-bag tax. Of course, if you want to fly into a city that appears on a map and has more than a population of one farmer, two chickens and an angry bus driver, you need to multiply all that by 17.

[orudge]

... and if it's Ryanair, your price is roughly €1 plus the credit card fee, baggage fee, insurance, taxes, the toilet allowance, food, cabin crew makeup ancillary charge, wing fee (15€ for a plane with one wing, 30€ for one with two wings), engine tax, breathable air fee, fuel, baggage handler deodorant charge, and the open-your-wallet-and-empty-it-into-the-bag tax. Of course, if you want to fly into a city that appears on a map and has more than a population of one farmer, two chickens and an angry bus driver, you need to multiply all that by 17.

... by which time, the British Airways flight looks like an attractive option!

[donchatryit]

... and if it's Ryanair, your price is roughly €1 plus the credit card fee, baggage fee, insurance, taxes, the toilet allowance, food, cabin crew makeup ancillary charge, wing fee (15€ for a plane with one wing, 30€ for one with two wings), engine tax, breathable air fee, fuel, baggage handler deodorant charge, and the open-your-wallet-and-empty-it-into-the-bag tax. Of course, if you want to fly into a city that appears on a map and has more than a population of one farmer, two chickens and an angry bus driver, you need to multiply all that by 17.

... by which time, the British Airways flight looks like an attractive option!

Or easyjet. There's always easyjet or even flybe.

[JamieLei]

... and if it's Ryanair, your price is roughly €1 plus the credit card fee, baggage fee, insurance, taxes, the toilet allowance, food, cabin crew makeup ancillary charge, wing fee (15€ for a plane with one wing, 30€ for one with two wings), engine tax, breathable air fee, fuel, baggage handler deodorant charge, and the open-your-wallet-and-empty-it-into-the-bag tax. Of course, if you want to fly into a city that appears on a map and has more than a population of one farmer, two chickens and an angry bus driver, you need to multiply all that by 17.

... by which time, the British Airways flight looks like an attractive option!

Or easyjet. There's always easyjet or even flybe.

That's not the point we're making here! They still charge for all sorts of extras whereas BA doesn't.

[orudge]

Well, depending on destination, yes. But both easyJet and Flybe have "added fees" of the sort that traditional full-service carriers such as British Airways, bmi, Lufthansa, Air France and so on don't have, hence my comment.

EDIT: Dang, in the time I was writing up my latest trip, Jamie pre-empted my response to donchatryit's message.

EDIT 2: Although, I can provide a link to this calculator on BA's site where they deal with this very issue. Admittedly, they do make it biased towards the kind of traveller who does want to check in bags, get the best seats, etc. The people who boast about Ryanair bargains tend to be the people who fly out of the middle of nowhere in the middle of the night, booked with a week's notice, with only hand luggage, to some random spot on the map that looks interesting and has a cheap fare.

Now then, back on-topic:

Trip: MSP - YYZ (Minneapolis - Toronto)
Airline: Air Canada
Flight No: AC7944
Date: 12th December 2010
Aircraft: Bombardier CRJ-100
Seat: 2F (Economy)
Comments: A short hop over to Toronto. Nothing much to report, really - it was a fine enough flight, although I'm not the biggest fan of the CRJ, particularly the smaller ones (with the misaligned windows, etc).

Trip: YYZ - LHR (Toronto - London Heathrow)
Airline: Air Canada
Flight No: AC858
Date: 12th December 2010 (although we didn't actually take off until the 13th)
Aircraft: Airbus A330-300
Seat: 2A (Business)
Comments: Air Canada's business class is very nice indeed. Lie-flat seats, and I actually managed to get some sleep on this one. Breakfast was fine; I didn't have dinner, or use the entertainment system. Flight was somewhat marred by the 3 hour delay out of Toronto (flight ended up leaving around 1.30am local time, with us having boarded at 10.30pm), due to snow and ice and other such fun things. This, combined with delays landing at Heathrow, led me to miss my flight to Edinburgh, despite having a 4 hour connection there!

Trip: LHR - EDI (London Heathrow - Edinburgh)
Airline: bmi
Flight No: BD60
Date: 13th December 2010
Aircraft: Airbus A321-200
Seat: 1D ("Flexible Economy", but a mid-haul Business seat)
Comments: Ended up on the BD60 instead of the BD58, due to the aforementioned delays. In a way, this ended up being rather good. Instead of being on an A319 in seat 1A, which would have been a standard Economy seat with a free sandwich and drink, I ended up in a newly-refurbished mid-haul A321, with a large, comfortable business class seat. A nice enough way to end the journey, considering.

After all this, I then had to defrost my car and drive for 2.5 hours up to Aberdeen. (My future flights will all be booked from Aberdeen Airport, which is about 20 minutes from here instead!)

And now, for the first time since mid-2009, I currently have no upcoming travel booked at all. Although I do have quite a few miles needing using (and a couple of work trips in 2011 which will add to them)... I guess Olivia will just have to see the other side of the world at some point.

[Ameecher]

Flybe are pretty bad for added fees, they charge you to select a seat but automatically select a seat for you and you have to purposely de-select a seat to save yourself £5.

But yeah, speaking of Flybe, my flight with them from Edinburgh to Norwich last night was in a holding pattern over Norwich airport waiting for it to stop snowing when the airport closed because it'd take 3 hours to clear the runway, as such we got diverted to Birmingham and had to get a bus to Norwich. Most annoying. Still, it was better than the option that was considered of returning us to Edinburgh!

[orudge]

Well, it's been a while…

Trip: MAN - DUB (Manchester - Dublin)
Airline: Aer Lingus
Flight No: EI203
Date: 21st June 2011
Duration: 1:00
Aircraft: Airbus A320
Seat: 6A (Economy)
Comments: A fine enough flight, really. Some nice views over the North Wales coast. The purpose of this flight was to avoid giving £170 of Air Passenger Duty to H.M. Government, so instead I gave Aer Lingus £40 or so and started my "official" journey in Dublin.

Trip: DUB - LHR (Dublin - London Heathrow)
Airline: bmi
Flight No: BD126
Date: 21st June 2011
Duration: 1:20
Aircraft: Embraer 145
Seat: 7F (Economy)
Comments: After a wait of quite a few hours in Dublin Airport, it was time for another short hop. Bit of a bumpy landing, but otherwise fine.

Trip: LHR - ICN (London Heathrow - Seoul Incheon Airport)
Airline: Asiana
Flight No: OZ522
Date: 21st June 2011
Duration: 10:50
Aircraft: Boeing 777-200ER
Seat: 2D (Business)
Comments: Service on Asiana was, as expected, superb. Business class was comfortable, although the seats are only angled lie-flat and not true flat bed seats, sadly. Still, I managed a good amount of sleep, which surprised me a little, as I expected to struggle to sleep on the angled seat. Highly recommended. Plus, Incheon is a fantastic airport to transfer at.

Trip: ICN - SYD (Seoul Incheon Airport - Sydney)
Airline: Asiana
Flight No: OZ601
Date: 21st June 2011
Duration: 10:10
Aircraft: Airbus A330-300
Seat: 3C (Business)
Comments: Another good flight, although I wasn't able to sleep quite as much as on the previous flight (two overnight flights are a killer). Again, service exceptional, food good, and some great views of Sydney as we came into land. Also, conveniently, the seat next to me was free (as it was on the previous flight) - two business class seats to myself isn't bad, eh?

Trip: MEL - AKL (Melbourne - Auckland)
Airline: Air New Zealand
Flight No: NZ124
Date: 6th July 2011
Duration: 3:25
Aircraft: Boeing 777-200ER
Seat: 4A (Business)
Comments: A short hop over to New Zealand. Air New Zealand were fantastic (although their safety video featuring Richard Simmons - Google it if you haven't seen it - is incredibly annoying). Great crew, fantastic seats (proper flat bed seats in a herringbone arrangement), excellent food and wine. A very pleasant little flight.

Trip: AKL - HKG (Auckland - Hong Kong)
Airline: Air New Zealand
Flight No: NZ39
Date: 11th July 2011
Duration: 11:30
Aircraft: Boeing 777-200ER
Seat: 6A (Business)
Comments: A more substantial flight now. Again, faultless service from Air New Zealand (safety video still annoying as hell, though). Fantastic crew - the purser made the effort to introduce himself to us all individually, get to know a little about us, and so on - very pleasant. I didn't have dinner as it was rather late when we departed, but I did enjoy breakfast. The seats proved particularly good on this flight - I went to sleep maybe an hour into the flight, and when I woke up, it was two hours until landing - a good 7-8 hours sleep there, best sleep I've ever had in an airplane!

Tomorrow's flight to Heathrow is a daytime flight, again with NZ, so I'll look forward to sampling their service fully, including some more of the excellent New Zealand wines they stock! But now, I think I am suitably refreshed enough to venture out into the wilds of Hong Kong, where I shall promptly collapse and melt due to the ridiculous humidity!

[buckethead]

a good 7-8 hours sleep there, best sleep I've ever had in an airplane!
!

On the Asiana flights you must've noticed that Koreans sleep during 99% of the flight!

[orudge]

I can't say I noticed that particularly, I think everybody followed much the same pattern of being awake for meals and attempting to sleep in between dinner and breakfast.