A Winged Whinge.

Whinge – to complain or fuss about something; a very Aussie/British expression.

I am on an around-the-world trip…I started in Melbourne on Friday evening, flew to Singapore, then onto London, then onto my first actual stop – Geneva, Switzerland…in addition to having a week-long meeting in Geneva, I got to spend some time with our great friends from Schwingen in Switzerland.  But, that’s not what this post is about – that will be tomorrow’s post.

Today, I am whinging about my flights.  As you may have gathered from looking at a map, Australia is pretty far from everything, so the airline that you choose to fly will make or break your trip.  My around-the-world ticket is with the Aussie airline, Qantas, who happen to be partners with American Airlines and British Airways, to name a few.  (Side note:  Qantas is known in Australia to be a great airline with good flight attendants, good service, and new planes, and they were widely regarded as one of the best airlines – until recently when they decided to ground their entire fleet for a couple of days during a union dispute with the pilots).  While I recognize that I am very fortunate to fly business class, the privilege has sometimes made me somewhat snotty about flights.  Just ask Jeff.

Flight Segment #1 – MelbourneàSingapore

I was fortunate to fly on a brand new A380 from Melbourne to Singapore (on a Qantas leg), and it was a glorious flight (not including the children who were running around business class like it was their job – who also happened to be the children of a pretty famous female tennis player – she could be the world #1…), but it was a glorious flight – comfy seat, neighbor that ignored me, great service, clean bathrooms, everything you could want in a flight.

Flight Segment #2 – SingaporeàLondon

First time in Singapore and it was nothing special, but not bad.  My connecting flight was a BA flight that was on time and boarding was quick.  The plane, however, was a piece of crap; an old 747 that had seen better days.  The business class section was a disaster – the seats were set in a yin and yang type configuration that has me (on the aisle) facing my seat mate (on the window) and his head was less than an arm’s length from mine.  The off-set nature of the seats makes this unbelievably awkward, if you don’t know your seat mate.  There is a divider that can be put up, but not until you are in the air for 10 minutes, so the entire settle-in time, taxi and take-off, you’re left staring at some stranger’s mug.  On top of it, my seat recline buttons only worked part of the time, and my headphones didn’t work, so I couldn’t watch movies.  I am a big fan of sleeping on long flights and take prescription sleeping pills to ensure that I land in my destination rested and ready to go.  All of that works well on a normal flight, but with the seating configuration of the crappy plane, anytime that seat-mate of mine moved, the entire pod shook…not good.  I slept for a good portion of the trip, just not peacefully – normally I knock-out and wake up when they are serving breakfast about an hour before we land.

BA 747-400 layout from http://www.seatguru.com/

Flight Segment #3 – LondonàGeneva

Nothing good or bad…just an average flight – which after the last flight is better than nothing J

BA, please reconfigure your business class section.  And, please retire you rickety-a$$ old, tired 747’s.  Otherwise the other airlines that choose to invest in modern equipment are going to eat your lunch.