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Airlines - the good and the bad


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 Quote:
Originally posted by me:
Anyone ever been upgraded?
How did you get the upgrade?
who is this impersonator...?

it certainly isn't me, which is who i thought it was when i first read it. so it must be someone else.

please try not to confuse me!?!
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Upgraded heaps but only when i was travelling by myself.

Stopped as soon as the wife came with me!

Also late checkins help the cause if overbooked the automatically bump ya up. and who likes hanging round airports for hours anyway?

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I got up graded once.

 

I had left Fiji at about 2am after not much sleep for a few nights and after 9 hrs was circling Tokyo but due to fog couldnt land. Circled for an hr (10 hrs into flight now) and couldnt get diverted to Nagoya as was full with other planes going there and not enought fuel to go to Kansai apparently so had to land at Haneda. No customs facilities so had to wait IN the plane ON the tarmac for a further 6 hrs till the people got their shit sorted and the guards at the botom of the plane left (we are up to 16 hrs now in that friggen plane). No food, plenty of booze, bored to tears, no movies. Finally a China Air flight had arrived and they opened customs for us.

 

Problem was I was at Haneda with no yen and no money changing facilites, couldnt even use my credit card and had to get to Narita in 3 hrs to meet the people to take me to the resort in Gunma I was working at. Hmmm. Waaaaaay too much booze had been consumed in the 6 hrs on the tarmac and all the Japanese people fled as they were where they wanted to be. I remember sitting with another plane survivor on the curb and crying.... tears get you EVERYWHERE. Eventually got a lift with the flight crew (who by then were good buddies) and they spotted us a cab to Narita where I was there 10 mins early....

 

I wrote a letter and complained at the lack of facilites to conect us to Narita. The rest of it wasnt really their fault, just circumstance but I didnt hear anything. I was waiting at the gate to board the plane on the way home when I realised my boarding pass said FIRST CLASS and I tell ya it was a sweet sweet flight back to NZ. Turned out they didnt have my address to send me a letter.

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your fog story is similar to mine in Jordan, except they lit up some emergency runway in the desert that i feared they were gonna try and land our 767 on. fortunately we diverted to somewhere with tarmac and a hut elsewhere in the desert, to sit on the plane for 6 hours til it cleared in amman. these guys i'm sure managed to fit an extra row or two of seats in cos i have never had so little leg room before.

 

and more on landings...

 

i have re-taken off (u'know all boosters back to maximum thrust) after approach to the runway on 3 separate occassions, usu with the tarmac only metres below. two in fog one in heavy rain. its always a tad unnerving. does this happen to others?

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I've never been upgraded, but I still try every time. My sister got upgraded once - seems she said she had a bad stomachache and the stewardess took here to business class! eek.gif Sounds good to me, maybe she was just very very lucky.

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well if I dont know if your male or female but you say you have a boyfriend that makes you either female or gay. I didnt know which one for sure but I guessed female.

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No, the food is not that much better - not on Qantas anyway. I only fly the Narita/Sydney leg so it might be different on other routes.

 

Mikazooki, i've experienced the last minute take-off at least a dozen times, all at domestic airports in Japan - mostly Toyama and Takamatsu. Its quite common during the Typhoon season. Once i was with a guy from Sydney and we came down through a storm to Toyama airport. We got hit by lightning at least 3 times (which in case its never happened to you rates as the scariest experience of my life on a plane - one bloody loud bang!) and we had two attempted landings/pull away before we finally made it on the third attempt. I think the pilots are taught to hit the runway hard in heavy rain to guard against aquaplaning....and let me tell you this guy didn't miss! After lightning, three attempts at landing and a controlled collision with the runway i nearly gave up flying.

 

In all honesty i was a borderline phobic for a while there and considered quitting my job. Throwing up before getting on planes and the whole bit wasn't very pleasant. In the end i just kept forcing myself to get on and now i'm over the worst of it. That said i can't say i will ever look forward to flying again! That's why i consider lots of other things before worrying about service when choosing who i fly with!

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I hate to say this but, I've also heard a rumour that Cathay Pacific staff treat gaijins and Asian customers differently. I've heard that said by many of my friends in Hong Kong and half believed it. My worst experience with them was two years ago when I was flying to Hokkaido to ski at Club Med. When we (my gf and me) arrived at the airport we were told our flight had been delayed. That meant we would miss our connecting flight at Kansai and though they arranged for another flight to connect us to Chitose it meant we would be there quite late. We immediately contacted Club Med and they said they could put us on an 11 pm train instead of the original 5 pm train which meant that we had to wait at Chitose for more than 2 hrs since our plane was arriving at 9 pm. We said that this was unacceptable and requested they make alternate transport arrangements for us, such as a bus directly from Chitose to Club Med which would get us there by midnite. They said they would try to make such arrangements and told us to contact their ground staff at Chitose. Needless to say, when we got to Chitose, the ground staff there said no arrangements had been made and we had to take the 11 pm train. We finally got to Club Med at nearly 3 am but were infuriated to find that Cathay Pacific had arranged for and paid for another group who were travelling on the same plane to be transported by taxi from Chitose to Club Med. I forgot to ask whether they were First Class passengers or what, since on that occasion, we were travelling Business Class. I suspect the main difference was the colour of our skin.

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air canada is extremely extremely average (euphemism for crap) especially domestic routes. the service is bad, attendants are rude. and this has nothing to do with the airline, but i found the immigration people at vancouver airport extremely interogatting and out right rude.

 

singapore airlines is great

 

malaysian has gotten alot better, and is cheap

 

thai does good thai curries

 

qantas is nothing special (except the singapore-sydney route, as they use the fancy new planes because they are trying to compete with sia)

 

cathay pacific is up there with singapore airlines.

 

and in my opinion most of the north american airlines are pish.

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speaking of free upgrades...

 

I am chillin' right now in JAL Sakura lounge, sippin beer and surfing the net, after being bumped from my Northwest flight...NW overbooked, so I gave up my ticket to get a nice comfy ride in business class!!! clap.gif clap.gif

 

I will enjoying my executive sleeper seat!!! oh yes...

 

danz

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if you yre ever in desperate need to get to europe and cant find a flight try austrian airlines. ive used them twice, once from dusseldorf-vienna-tokyo and london-vienna-tokyo, and the planes are empty. ;\)

 

sure, like db said if u miss the meal, u get onigiri but the positive is u get 3 seats to yourself.

 

united are the worst by far.i will never fly with them again. 3 strikes and your out. mad.gif

 

british also due to their sneaky tricks. they sent my bags to barcelona instead of melbourne. when i cracked the S**ts they eventually gave me a free flight..the catch, i had to fly full fare to london to redeem the freebee. mad.gif

 

Virgin definately the best for food and in flight entertainment. \:\)

 

the greatest scam though came from australia's second, now defunct, airline..ANSETT. not allowing passengers to use their frequent flyer points with other star alliance airlines because they got money back from creditors. i had a free flight to europe and asia but left empty handed.

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