On flying

Mindful of Stu-N's recent experience (first hand horrors of Terminal 5), I contemplated my own encounters with flying this year.

Of course, flying Emirates first class to NZ isn't something we're likely to do again - or at least not any time soon. After all, 28 hours in the air is STILL 28 hours in the air: you're no less tired just not additionally strained and exhausted by the physical cramping of economy class. In some ways then, flying BMI baby to Edinburgh was therefore a more normal experience for me.

The flight up was early (and alone: mate Annie came down with dread lurgy leaving her bed-bound and without the conference) but fine. We landed on time and efficiently.

Coming home was less good: we should have took off at 6.55pm. When I checked in, all seemed well. by the time I got upstairs to the departure gates it was now delayed by an hour. Turns out the plane itself had started the day off delayed coming in from Spain. They'd never caught up. So how come the check in screens mentioned nothing of a delay they must clearly have known would be in place as a knock on effect for the whole day?

That was grr number one.

Grr number two related to ticketing and seating. An elderly couple ended up in the middle of a severe row with a hapless young woman and two cabin staff, seemingly because seats booked in January hadn't been kept for them.

The fact they had seats seemed to totally by-pass them.

It seemed right to keep quiet when I realised as we dropped into East Mids airport that actually both myself and someone I knew on the return leg had managed to seat ourselves in the wrong row (especially as it was by doing this that a row was freed up for the elderly couple to be reseated...)

Ho-hum.