A moan about European air travel

Why, oh why, oh why, do airlines board business class passengers first? Business Class passengers sit at the front of the plane. Always! In the interests of getting all the people on board as quickly and painlessly as possible wouldn’t it make more sense to get the people sitting at the very back on first? I’ve flown probably about as many times Economy as I have Business Class and I still can’t understand it. If I’m paying the extra for Business Class I would definitely prefer to hang back in my comfy business lounge munching on the free nuts until all the cattle and their rancid offspring have been loaded first. Get them out of the way, close over the little curtain and let me take my seat in peace. I don’t want them banging into my newspaper as they shuffle past whilst their parents sneer at me for opting to pay for a seat up front.

By the same token, when I’m travelling economy class I hate the fact that the business class passengers are generally still blocking up the aisles while they try to squeeze their oversized wheely bags & laptops into the overhead lockers.

Surely it would improve the entire system to just start from the back.

"Would passengers holding tickets for rows 20 to 24 please come forward for boarding?"
"No sir, you have a ticket for row 18, please step to the side for a moment."
"Ok, thank you for your cooperation ladies and gentlemen, now can we have passengers in rows 15 to 19?"
…..and so on.
"Now may I invite our business class passengers to board the aircraft. Thank you for choosing CommonsenseAirlines, we hope you have a pleasant flight."

Bang, done. The plane will be boarded in less time than it takes to point out the emergency exits and basically everyone will be in the section they are supposed to be in.

I made reference already to the hand luggage issue which is another annoyance. Generally flights only allow one piece of hand luggage. Why is that such an impossible concept for people to grasp? The worst offenders are usually the regular flyers. My personal pet hate being women travelling in business class. Before I get shot for being sexist, I’m not saying that women shouldn’t be allowed in business class. Of course they should, who else is going to get me my orange juice and morning paper? No, I’m only kidding! What I’m saying is that a wheely-bag, a laptop and a handbag do not constitue one piece of hand luggage. It’s three. I’ll lend you my calculator if you can’t figure it out yourself. The one-bag policy is common knowledge and even if you are somehow blissfully unaware you’ll normally find signs in departures stating that fact. One piece of hand luggage per person. Jesus, they even give you a little frame so that you can check to see if your Samsonite wheely bag will fit into the overhead locker. It would all be so simple if people just paid attention to what they are being told.

And don’t give me any guff about the fact that you are still under the weight restriction. You’re not. Both you and your bags are overweight. Accept it. Quit carrying so much crap around with you and join a gym! I don’t care about the weight aspect. What I care about is the fact that by putting three bags and your jacket into the overhead locker you are seriously limiting the chances of me being able to fit my one regulation sized bag up there. Consideration for others, not a chance!

Then you have the people who know that they are seated down the back of the plane and so to make life easier for themselves later they will stow their handluggage in an overhead locker closer to the front of the plane. These people should be forced to serve the food to the other passengers as punishment. Or perhaps they should be forced to eat the food, that might be more of a punishment.

Anyone who has been on board a plane knows that when you board at the front the row numbers begin with one and then increase in units of one as you proceed down the aisle. For anyone on a plane for the first time this ingenious system of seat numbering should become apparent by the time you get to row 3. That is unless the seat numbering was done by using prime numbers, however row 4 will soon quash that possibility. Why then do some people start scrutinising their boarding card once onboard and then comparing it to every row that they pass? Are they thinking that maybe row 23 will somehow be in between rows 7 and 8? These people are clearly from the shallow end of the gene pool.

I could go on and on and cover such topics as:

 Children and why letting them hit the seat in front of them is gonna piss someone off.
 Mobile phones and why some people should have them stuck sideways where the sun don’t shine.
 „Please stay in your seats until the engines have been switched off“ and why some people really do possess a severe moronic streak.

However, suffice it to say that there are too many morons out there and it’s got to stop. Enough is enough.

End of Rant!

Was that a sattire or are you really that arrogant?

Please elaborate, what does arrogance have to do with it?

I think Homer's worried you might count each of his doughnuts as one piece of hand luggage.

Mmmmm... Krispy Kremes

@ Keydeck

So, I guess it wasn't a satire.

Well, by the sounds of it when you are in economy class you are put off by having to wait for business class ticket holders to store their luggage (what, is it so bad to wait a few minutes, what's the rush, your not leaving until eveyone has bordered, anyway). Then, when you are in business class you do not want to even look at the low-lives in economy class, or deal with any women sitting in business class. It just sounds like you think all things and people should revolve around you. I think your comment of "the cattle and their rancid offspring" was particularly off-putting. No, reasonable person would make that comment straight-faced. I guess because of that and the overall tone of the rant that I thought it was either a joke or you were arrogant.

I have a very low tolerance for fools. I'd rather be seated comfortably, be that in either Business or Economy class than wait even 1 minute due to someone who is faffing about. The remark concerning women was a joke. That's why I said "I'm only kidding". It amused me so I wrote it. I have no delusions of grandeur as anyone who knows me will attest. I simply have a quick temper and a confrontational demeanor when confronted with stupidity. As for the rancid offspring comment, I thought that might upset someone, I just liked the sound of it. Totally tongue in cheek though.

Anyroads, if you've read the rant and come to the conclusion that it is born out of arrogance then fair enough. I'm not writing them for approval or argument. You're entitled to your opinion as much as I am to my rant. Them's my feelings and I'll stick by 'em.

Well Homer, it depends what you mean by satire. I say this because if you had to ask if it was satire, then you are probably unclear as to what satire is.
From Dictionary.com:
A literary work in which human vice or folly is attacked through irony, derision, or wit.
Based on this definition then the piece was very obviously satire, although debatably a literary work :-), although I reckon keydeck is practising for a career in Journalism!

with the exception of row 13, which you will find is always missing

I personally have a problem with peoples definition of hand luggage. I flew with Lufthansa last week and actually complained 'cos some geyser had a laptop, briefcase, luggage bag, and six tons of shopping on the plane, leaving several people without any space atall. I was hot, the plane was full of bloody exchange students returning home, and it was late, so I moaned at the flight attendant. The bloke must have actually known me, as the first thing he did was give me a beer, even though we had not taken off, and people were still boarding. Always guaranteed to calm me down, free beer! What a great bloke.

or he found you utterly attractive and wanted to soften you up?

Shit. Had not even thought of that. AND he was an air steward...

It seems to me that the ranting about hand luggage should be directed towards the airlines and not the passengers. Afterall, if the airlines consistently delivered our checked luggage per the plan, we wouldn't need much more than a book as hand luggage. Incidentally, we in Canada are allowed to routinely take 2 pieces of hand luggage which, are independent of: "camera, coats, purses (25cmx30cmx20cm or less), urns containing human remains, strollers, child restraint systems, canes, crutches, walkers, containers carrying life sustaining items and other similar items". (That's from the Air Canada site.) This year Lufthansa left our luggage in Frankfurt for 5 days while we were in Belize. Even our hand luggage was not enough for this mishap (even in Belize). BTW, they knew where the errant luggage was from day 1.
May I also say that the airports need to accept some of the blame as well. Since security is negligible in some arrivals areas (e.g. Vancouver domestic) it is possible to have your luggage snatched from under your nose by a thief. Hence passengers are reluctant to check any valuable or important items.
Hence the volume of hand luggage.

Read the full article from Eamonn Fitzgerald, Munich

Keydeck - as a frequent flyer myself - I'm in agreement with you 100% regarding the luggage situation - one of my personal rants is also the giving out of broadsheet newspapers and then everyone having to duck and dive while some arrogant @sshole contorts him/her-self to read every line on a paper they probably wouldn't even bother with , smacking you in the head as they try to turn the pages !

Mobile phones !!! Why do some people think that the rules regarding mobiles somehow don't apply to them?? I was on a LH flight to Milan a few weeks back and some cretin was still talking on his mobile as we took off !!

Food !! ( But not food as we know it Jim ! ) Whatever happened to food on the planes - now in economy it is a choice of a semi-stale cheese roll, or a semi-stale ham roll, and that's it, regardless of the time of the flight. When travelling back ( or outwards) late in the evening I always try to go Business Class - if only for the reason of getting a hot meal inside me - cos I know that by the time I get to the hotel the restaurants will have closed. Now I find that even Business class is starting to give out cold snack style trays.

Can someone tell me what the difference really is these days on the AirBuses for example, between Business and economy. That little curtain can be positioned wherever they want it - last week I flew to Heathrow - Business Class - Yippee !! - I was in the fcuking 20th row fer chrissake ! so there is no difference in the seats. Where do these airlines get off these days - treating all their passengers as cattle - even the ones in Business class.

Even the Business lounges are pitiful compared to what they were even a couple of years ago. In the LH Business Lounge at Heathrow, cocktail biscuits, and peanuts, some beer, vodka, tomato juice and orange juice !! Hmmm.. won't go hungry there huh ?? Now if you actually want to eat somethin in you need to be in the Senator lounge - heh - try getting in there when you don't have the secret handshake

OK - end of my addition to the rant - but I could go on for hours.

Worst part about it is - Sunday I have to fly out to Dublin with a changeover in Düsseldorf !

Soon the mobil phones will be allowed for the entire flight. Forgot where I read that. Right now, they interfere with Navagation instruments and can't really be used during take off and landing but in the air is technically ok but still against the rules. Then I wonder, 'how do phones work that high? do they get a signal from towers on the ground or would they just not work?'

Next they will need a compartment for noisy people just like the trains.

I could be wrong, but I think a GSM base station signal is good for up to 5 miles so long as you've got line of sight. Much less than that if there are obstructions such as buildings and so forth. If that's the case then there'd be no problem using phones in a plane.

The passengers used phones on 9-11 so I guess it's pretty much proof positive that phones work up there.

I have heard that it is not a problem with causing side effects on the navigation systems et al, but more a case of the difficulty the phone companies have of tracing which cell you are connected to at any one time as you are travelling so fast overland, in order to bill you for it !!

Don't care - I don't want to listen to some arrogant @sshole waffling on in a loud irritating Bavarian accent during the whole of my flight !

think of a few problems, when you are midway across the atlantic, wheres the nearest phone mast?

Plane companies make a lotta lotta money off their own installed satelitte phones.

But, like most things the times are a changing.

With the introduction of high speed net access on planes (normally delievered by satelite too) comes Voice over IP and other new technologies.

P

I don't know the deal in Europe, but the airline industry in the US was deregulated 20 or so years ago and that's the reason for the decline in service. Once competition started getting really fierce in the early to mid 90s, airlines got more focused on getting as many passengers as possible and less on quality of service. You'd think that more paying customers would mean more profit and consequently more money to spend on decent meals, etc., but it doesn't. For one thing, fares are much lower than they used to be while the cost of flying (maintenance, fuel, labor and yes, food) has been steadily rising. That's the reason you're seeing more seats in business class (AND economy)--those fares offset seats in economy that are going for much less than they should. For another thing, airlines keep adding more routes and flights to stay competitive and quality must suffer in the face of quantity.

Yes, it really sucks when people have too many carry-ons. But I know from experience that it's less time-consuming to let people slide than delay take-off while some self-important business flyer (like my former boss in NY) argues that he/she cannot be separated from their laptop nor spend time at baggage claim on the other end.

And personally, I like being able to sit down and have a drink in biz or first class wihle economy's getting loaded on. You have to be at the gate when boarding starts anyway-- would you rather have to stand around in the boarding area for 30 minutes waiting?

@mdfbayern

Spot on about business calss these days. Flight I took last week had only 4 rows of economy seats, and the rest of the plane was business class. The food has also dropped in quality in business class, thats true, and the LH lounge at Heathrow is quite foul.
The only benefit in flying business class in Europe seems to me to be that the flight is more flexible. Hardly warrants the price. Maybe when you can access the net on planes, business class will get decent bandwidth, and they'll throttle it to a trickle for the economy class.

I'm flying out to the states tomorrow bloody morning at some unearthly hour - via Frankfurt. Oh what joy

Don - you can get flexible tickets without them having to be business - however - for the price difference ( +- €30 !! ) it is probably better to go with the dubious benefits you get from going Business ( like double Miles & More points ! )

The frightening thing is the cost of the tickets - obviously designed to fleece business. Last summer I was doing a tour of Europe rolling out new images to all our company's PC's, and decided to take a stopover in Stockholm over the weekend. The price of my ticket dropped from a staggering €1500 for a Monday out - Friday back to a much more reasonable €239 for including a Saturday night ! How can they possibly justify such a hike ??

Still plenty of RANT left in me - anyone else want to bring up a bone of contention ??

They HAVE to fleece businesses. Otherwise there'd be no seats for €239

I regularly have to fly around Europe working, and it is crazy. My usual trip this year, is Munich to Frankfurt and back in a day. Its only a 40 minute flight, so always go Economy, and its still around the 500 EUR mark.

Thank go the company pay !!

Pepper, your company isn't very clever. If they were, they would buy 2 tickets with open dates that stay over a Saturday. You fly out on the ticket marked the 5th, but fly back with the one that says you flew out on February 227th. My tax consultant does this when she has to fly to Dresden, so if she does it, I have to guess it saves money.

Having to stay for 227 days in February - I'd miss most of the summer !!!

Ah! A typo! I'll leave it, it's funny.

They used to do that, but then whenever I was in Stockholm SAS (local Scandivanian airline) used to get confused, and tell me there was no ticket booked. Just because they would have two open return tickets in the system.

So he goes another RANT ! They advertise themselves as an alliance (Star Alliance) but actually the computer system just cannot communicate with each other, so it causes a nightmare when checking in !

Now although it's more expensive, so says money due to less stress, less time trying to fix these problems later with Lufthansa, etc.

@ showem

The tickets you refer to are called "open jaws" tickets and are not allowed for the cheap tickets. If the person you know is caught and it is known to happen, he/she would have to pay the full fare on both tickets. This is especially risky when you use e-tickets with the tickets tagged to your frequent flier number. The only way around this is to tag these tickets to two separate credit card numbers (Ive been told this works but have never tried it).

I travel around a lot on work and try to take all flights where I have to make a connection on BA. They are cheaper and IMHO the service, lounges, food etc is far better than LH. Just as an example on a recent flight to Rome, the prices quoted for LH were € 1,496 and BA gave me the same route for € 891.

(puts LH staff id away)

Got to say the quality of the Lufthansa on board service is going down.

Only 6 months ago, at the back of the MUC-AMS full plane you got a choice of ham or cheese sandwich, now on a half full plane there is no choice let - obvious cutbacks...

It also depends on the staff who are working. On one LON-MUC flight we have a drink service 4 times, I dont think I have been merry coming off a plane before There was a lovely atmosphere was great.

But in the world of cutting prices something has to give. I have been told that virigin atlantic are now charging for alcoholic drinks in economy on the transatlantic routes?

I flew aer lingus from LHR to cork, and the old biddy was most disgruntled next to me, when there was no biscuit with the coffee... I flew BA LHR to Belfast, and the whole plane got served a full breakfast.

at the end of the day, you take your choice with who you fly with, but so much often depends on who is pushing the trolleys as well

P

(OH - and btw I am no LH Trolly dolly, my arse is too big!)

hot tip: always order kosher

bigger meal, often with salmon, etc. jealous stares guaranteed!

or lactose intollerent... all the fresh fruit is lovely

P

why, whenever remotely possible, would anyone ever consider travelling with any other carrier than british airways>?

beware cheap imitations.

As a student i worked my summers as a check-in agent and it didn't escape my attention that I could 'log-in' to the passenger lists of any flight using this specific software to check-in. My last day was spent bringing down global boundaries by switching virtually every Halal and Kosher meal around on the B.A. network, and occasionally making a few joke comments along the way... Happy days.

But if I'm not working, Jordi is dead right - Kosher is the way to go.

I am sure a few people had a bit of a shock when they unwrapped their halal cheese steak sandwiches

flew to the u.s. over christmas. was about to order my usual whiskey on the rocks to get into the vacation spirt and they asked for 5 bucks. yup, american f*cking airlines charged 5 $ or € for all alcholic beverages. have always flew united or continental and was peachy. won't make that mistake again.

Ha ha ha. You too? My staff login still works on Amadeus!
And as for
well less said about that the better. Wasn't me gov. Honest.

@ Katrina

What's the point of creating an this star alliance when you this does not work. Although to date my only bad experiances were between SAS (checking in at Stockholm) and Lufthansa (my FTL card) for etix.

OK, will stop moaning now.

It does work. Generally. Do you realise how many people use StarAlliance services every day? Do you realise what systems go behind every part of your journey, from ticketing to check-in to weight and balance (how you load the plane so that it can still fly)?
I'm not saying that the thing is perfect (it isn't, I never check-in luggage which goes via Schipol but this is due to their back-end ground systems) but if you actually knew how much data and how many different systems were involved, you'd be surprised that you and your luggage gets there remotely safely at all. Star Alliance does not mean that everything runs off the same system though, SAS has its' own, LH and Austrian Group share and have added BMI (but not BMIBaby). Delta has its' own system...Emirates uses LH Systems but isn't StarAlliance...same with Air Berlin.
It is all to do with free markets and freedom of choice. StarAlliance is just that, an alliance. Sure, LH likes members to sign-up for LH Systems but it is not obligatory. And even if the airlines did, ground handling operations are a different ball game.
As for MUC-AMS, well a *certain* employer which uses most of the capacity on that route has signed a deal with KLM to agree cheaper rates...
Katrina

Thought Don was absolutely right about the seat numbering. There must be some mind bogglingly sensible reason for the way they do it, because his way just seems way better.

Not sure about the hand luggage bit. If I have a briefcase, a big coat, and a carry on its because those shit airlines (expecially Aer Lingus) can't be trusted to deliver your luggage.

If I don't have too much hand luggage, then I observe lots of assholes have more luggage than brains.

Now to mobile phones, a mobile phone is a powerful Radio transmitter. You know you are getting a call, because 2 seconds before the phone rings you hear interference on the radio/tv, or even a normal phone. Nobody really knows what effect this will have on navigation gear, so they just ban them. Same for CD readers which include a small laser.

Mobile phones can work at up to 30km distance from the base station. 30km is the limit for a technical reason that involves the speed of light and 2 to power of 7 being 128. So there is nothing to stop mobile phones working inside planes.

911 did prove that, and basically if all the stewards are dead, and it looks like you're going to be flown into a building, not many people are going to rap your knuckles for potentially confusing the navigation gear with your phone call.

but lufthansa and one of their partners allow the use of discmans during flight, their other partner - the shyte one of the 2, star alliance I think - dont allow them.

annoys me to hell as they tell you at booking it will be operated by a partner, but you dont know which till you get to the airport.
And its typical sods law that you have forgotten or just finished your book when you get the flight when you cant listen to your discman!

Ahh... that's the advantage of being a regular flyer Bex's, although I think its also possible for others.

I just log onto the Lufthansa web page, click on my flight, and it tells me who will be operating the flight ! So I am usually prewarned.