The Weekly Commute

Let me tell you about my travel week - this week was a classic, first week back in the air and all I could muster was a middle seat - bulkhead (for those who fly regularly you know what I mean!)    To add insult to injury the flights was completely oversold, taking off late in the day for a four-hour return flight to Toronto and landing around midnight.    Aaahhh home at last I thought….

Actually arriving at midnight was not the worst part, oh no, not by a long shot!   Mother nature had to add a little salt to the wound – “hey, let’s add a couple of hours of thunderstorms to mess up the already overloaded air traffic control system”; why not park all the planes in the de-icing staging area of the airport and make them wait for an additional two more hours until we find a gate for them...   Hell, while we’re at it let’s turn down the air-conditioning to save fuel while we sit here – does the concept of a Turkish sauna mean anything to you?    It was ugly, ugly!   Did I say “ugly?”

Yes, there is an actual website for this...
www.airlinecomplaints.org/.

Yes, a great initiation back into the realms of flying as part of making a living – oi vay!!

I suppose I’m still a tad over-tired as I don’t usually look at the “glass half empty” (well not too often anyway) or get as grumpy but lately the airlines have really gotten under my skin.  

I’m not sure if it’s the surly airline staff that “serve” you, seriously the thinly veiled contempt that they seem to exude each and every time you converse with one of them is a tad annoying, especially when you already feel like you’re getting fleeced to fly.  In North America, it’s the added costs that just pile up around once you buy the ticket that annoys the hell out of me.   Extra to check a bag, extra to get a pillow or blanket and even extra to get a flimsy set of earphones – where does the madness end?   Would it better if the airline staff gave a shit about you as a paying customer?   Great question – have we become too jaded and cynical?   Or is that just me J

A day of extreme tragedy

There is no question that the face of airline travel changed September 11^th, 2001.   That day of unprecedented terrorism erased a lifetime of enjoyment for generations who had been accustomed to seeing a plane trip as “fun”!   Overnight it became a much more scary proposition to fly (even though the statistics continue to point out that automobile travel is a much riskier), and one that became more painful as the shadow of 9/11 played its way out globally over the ensuing years.   Many would say “rightly so” given the global situation and the various terrorist groups/cells and the far-flung evidence of their handiwork ever present.  

In essence, it redefined our travel experience.   I feel a true sense of loss to think that my kids will never experience the freedom of traveling without barriers.  You see our kids have only ever known airline travel as a series of line ups, security screenings, random searches, biometric scans, a list of rules as long as your arm for what you can and can’t take on a plane – and so it goes.   It transformed a once exciting and fun life experience into a bothersome, annoying and frustrating one for 99% of the travellers.

You know it wasn’t always like this; prior to 9/11 flying held a certain mystic and old world charm for me personally.  I used to get genuinely excited about flying no matter how long the flight or where I was headed, as long as I was on a plane.   Now perhaps I had watched too many old movies, or seen too many travel logs but I genuinely loved to fly.   Now, not all my flying experiences have been bad, quite the contrary.   Let me tell you about my best experience:  

In fact a couple of years ago I was coming back from two weeks in India (had been out there on business). I remember getting to the airport in Mumbai for my flight back to Toronto, via Brussels and up until now I hadn’t paid any attention to the airline that I was flying back on.  I had flown on a mix of Lufthansa and BritishAirways to India and assumed that I was going with the same carriers on the way home.  Wow, was I in for a shock!  

In the past I had always booked my own flights and paid a great deal of attention to the airline I was flying on, its safety record, my points accumulations, my seat assignment etc.   Clearly I had gotten “out of the groove” and become lazy!   My assistant (yes, pretty fancy eh?) now booked all of business travel, I just gave her the dates and she handled the rest – no worries.

A wave of frustration flooded over me as I checked to see which airline I was taking back to Canada – “I’ve never heard of that airline….don’t tell me it’s a charter flight” said that little voice in my head….crap!

Jet Airways plan landing in Mumbai

So it was with a mixture of frustration and consternation that I boarded my Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Brussels, having never heard of them before didn’t bode well and so to say I was concerned was an understatement of epic proportions!   That all changed as I board and was ushered into the Business class section where an attendant stood in the middle of the aisle ready to greet me.

I’ll always remember these words, he said, “Welcome Mr. Wallis we’ve been expecting you”.   That instant changed everything – my frustration dissipated completely away as he smiled warmly at me.  In fact his smile was so infectious that I was powerless to do anything except smile broadly in return.  All of a sudden I felt very important and almost like I was in a James Bond movie…. he actually knew who I was….wow!

In a very formal English accent he asked if I planning on sleeping on my overnight flight, and that if I was; was I ready to get into my pajamas.  I embarrassingly snorted that I didn’t have any pajamas to change into.   He then completely surprised me by holding out a neatly folded cloth package and said that if I’d like to change he would see that my clothes were pressed and hung for my journey to Brussels.   As I took the package and went to the toilet to change I quickly realized that the pajamas were made of the finest silk, in fact I had never worn silk pajamas before and they were extremely soft and comfortable.  As I emerged from changing he was there to take my clothes and the showed me to my seat or bed as it had now been converted.   In my absence he had quickly made up my bed complete with fitted sheets, pillow topped mattress cover and a large well fitting duvet (doona in Australian).   What type of champagne would you like Mr. Wallis?   Man I could get used to this type of air travel J

It highlights that not all airlines are created equal.  That experience was the best and most unexpected airline experience of my life, so just when I think it can’t get any worse that the cattle call commutes we generally endure each week I harken back to that time I was in India where they unveiled the long forgotten art and luxury of air travel to me.  

Thank you Jet Airways you’re by far my best airline experience - ever!