Our Aviation Corespondent Reports On His Latest Experience Of My Favourite Airline As He travels North Of The Border.
Our Aviation Correspondent’s Preferred Transport!
Having been forced by my companies HR department to fly up to Glasgow, I was quite pleased to be flying up from the City airport in London, but all was not as expected.
Now obviously the main role of the airport is to dispatch business people to the furthest flung cities around Europe, BAA obviously took a leaf out of London Undergrounds forward thinking manual.
I arrived on the Wednesday afternoon and entered into a very cramped airport, it’s a single building consisting of only one bar, one cafe and one restaurant and no fast food outlets.
I swiftly slipped through BA’s checkout desk having taken into account all the latest security regulations and trying not to stare at the armed policemen, who were obviously contemplating the contents of my travel pack,( sorry boy’s, I have no melon to surrender and entered into the only departure lounge).
Agghhhhh! it appeared that I had entered a packed Victoria underground tube station in the height of rush hour, there were laptops being held high in the air and lot’s of overweight business people trying to force their way through this exodus of other equally overweight people.
I thought that they’d all gone “barmy” as I watched talk ever so loudly into their Bluetooth ear pieces, as they jostled their way through the madding crowd, grunting and hissing as they went.
My phone rang and I arranged to secure a bolt hole with rest of my crew near the bar, who were still checking in, I growled and snapped my way through this sea of animals and got to the bar, where I was astounded to find two different queues awaiting to be served.
One queue was jostling to be served, with fist’s full of euros held forth across the bar, beckoning to be served, the other was quietly awaiting their turn at the bar, obviously the English queue, I naturally joined the second queue.
All of a sudden my crew appeared by my side, as quick as rats up a drain pipe!, as we argued about who should buy the first round, we were astounded to discover that all the draught beer had run out??.
Now armed with our rather small glass bottles of liquid supplement, we surged forth towards the departure gate and surrendered them before boarding a cramped BA flight to Glasgow.
The plane struggled to take off over loaded with obese, balding, pot bellied Glaswegians business people, I looked down the central isle and saw only a sea of financial times flapping away, I watched as my fellow passengers struggled to drop to fit behind their tray tables, hardly any room left to place the food trays which were now being handed out.
Now little known to the flight crew and my fellow passengers, we were about to get a really wicked curry chicken, I’ve never ever seen so many hands reach for the call buttons and soon the complimentary drinks trolley was heading at full turbo speed down the aisle.
Now, I had been given an aisle seat next to a rather well endowed female, who began to tell me how she had me her new found love and after about 40 minutes of draining conversation, she asked if I had been actually listening?. Huh!
I had been in fact concentrating all my thoughts and attention upon her clevage, so I replied quite simply “They remind me of a photo finish at a Zeppelin balloon race”, she shut up then and I leaned back and smiled.
After we landed me and the rest of the crew dumped our baggage at the hotel and toured the local watering holes, only to be accosted by women asking if we were seeking any company, beats using Yellow pages, I guess?
And Where He Spent Some Of His Valuable Time!
After we left out last watering hole, having wiped our feet before leaving the establishment, we decided to get our heads down and went on to conduct a short city tour early in the morning.
Hey ho !
Phil
Footnote: B.A. beware Phillip is shortly anticipated in Amos.
May 18th, 2007 at 10:04 pm
Having now returned from Amos with the worlds greatest airline, I am pleased that all went very stunningly well with British Airways. on my outbound journey, I happily shipped out my bicycle, checked in my luggage and headed towards the bar in haste, without the slightest of problems.
The return journey went equally as well, not the slightest of problems. Now if you were not so wise, you may have considered flying via a cheaper airline, possibly a “CHARTER” flight??
Heaven forbid, never ever make that error, whilst checking in at Dalaman, I happened to notice the adjacent queue, a very well known High St travel agents, with their own airline were experiencing a delay problem!
Now the most amazing thing was that I suspected that Ron and Lynn had booked their return journey with this company and that somewhere within the hundreds of people awaiting their check-in, they were being told by their airline that if they has pre-paid for a meal that there was only a mere 2 hour delay, but if they had decided not to have a pre-paid meal, then they were subjected an astonishing 5 hour delay????
Obviously a very politically correct airline.