Observations about Flying Business Class

Yes, much to my delight, we were upgraded to Business Class for the flight on Cathay Pacific from Vancouver to New York. This has happened to me only once before, on a leg from Honolulu to Sydney, many years ago. At that time business class brought you larger seats with more leg room, along with extra service, better food and real knives and forks.

But lately my flying has been done on Boeing 777-200s and I have wondered what it would be like to travel in the newly designed, rather odd looking seats that are the business class seats provided for these planes. I even briefly flirted with the idea of paying for business class on my trip to Australia but the 9 -10 times greater price figure seemed too outrageous to me so we toughed it out in the economy class for 15 hours. Again, for this trip, I checked it out but the difference cannot be justified in my mind and certainly not for this relatively short flight of 4 hours 40 minutes duration.

The Cathay Pacific schedule has recently changed and the Vancouver to New York leg of the flight, which is actually part of a flight from Hong Kong to New York, has morphed into a red eye flight as it leaves at 10.30 pm local time and arrives at 6.55 am, which is not so nice for those who have to travel to meet us at the airport.

Each business class seat is its own little entity in this plane, separated one from the other which is just fine for the single traveller but not so friendly for those travelling together. I have always thought the seats rather narrow looking as I have passed through that part of the cabin and having tried one now, I think it would not be especially comfortable for a larger person for a long haul. The wonderful advantage is that the seat turns into an almost fully reclining bed which is quite comfortable for sleeping. Each alcove has its own headphones, personal TV and stowed table.

Even before the aeroplane took off, business class passengers were offered beverage service, in this case it was orange juice or champagne and I suppose you could build your own Mimosa by taking one of each, which certainly was fine with the stewardesses as I saw someone do.

After takeoff each passenger received a small toilet pack including a pair of socks and a sleeping mask and a menu for the dinner to come. Now it was 11.30pm by this time and dinner was slowly served over the next hour and a half. I’m sorry to say I have no photos of the food as my camera was in my hand luggage above the OS’s seat. I know I should have refused the dinner and taken the opportunity to sleep but I simply had to enjoy all the bonuses which went with this surprise upgrade.

Dinner, served on the foldout table set with a placemat and cloth napkin, started with a seasonal salad with Gravlax salmon and a delicious dressing. There was a choice of three different dishes for the main course and I chose butterflied prawns wrapped in bean curd skin and served with fried rice and vegetables. The wine flowed freely however I am teetotal, but the OS enjoyed the choosing from the many on offer. Then followed a cheese plate and fresh fruit or a fruit flan or no doubt all three if desired.

The tea and coffee service was interrupted by some pretty wild turbulence and the stewardesses were ordered to their seats for a time. Ultimately it was served later but by this time I had chosen to recline my seat as fully as possible and sleep for the remainder of the flight. Unfortunately this was only for two hours before we landed in JFK airport.

There is a lot to be said for business class travel and I certainly would do it if it were more reasonably priced. Even priced up to four times economy class I would be very tempted and no doubt succumb. But eight to ten times seems just too much for me.

Now I have talked with many people who travel business class and it is interesting to note that hardly any of them pay the advertised price. Either they are frequent flyers and use points to upgrade or just the evening before we left we had dinner with a couple who said they earned them through charging everything they could on their special airtravel credit cards. So it seems that the few people who actually pay the advertised price are subsidizing others who pay much less for one reason or another. I mean these air travel points schemes started out as a reward for being loyal customers to one airline or another but now you can get free flights by charging a house renovation to your credit card and in fact I know one family who got six free tickets for their family from Canada to England in just this way. It’s no wonder the airlines are losing money hand over fist. I am sure the banks who have these credit cards do pay the airlines money for these tickets but at a highly reduced rate from normal. Frankly I just shake my head as I have no idea how charging completely unrelated items to your credit card really has anything to do with flights on airlines or how it managed to become the way that so many people now pay for their travel.

However, I must say that I thoroughly enjoyed the luxury of business class travel which came our way so unexpectedly. So thank you so much Cathay Pacific and if you are looking for volunteers to upgrade again, I would be happy to oblige.

 

From the Sunshine to the Rain Again

What a shock! After enjoying the sunny southern climes Downunder for the past five weeks, landing in Vancouver with a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, along with rain and in some parts snow, was indeed a shock to the system.

Four very wonderful days were spent in the lovely city of Perth in Western Australia, but our return journey to Sydney was most unpleasant as we were caught in an Australia-wide baggage handlers’ wildcat strike which at first delayed our flight by six and a half hours, but when it finally departed it was without the luggage and just made it into Sydney before the airport curfew at 11pm. Having arrived at Perth airport at 7.30 am and spending a good part of the day there we were glad to finally arrive in Sydney even if it was midnight. I have to commend the Qantas people who managed to keep their cool and their politeness that day and throughout the next days as they tried to sort out the luggage mess which was no fault of theirs.

At Sydney airport we spoke to the Qantas baggage service people before we booked into our Canadian flight two days later and they gave us little hope of it being with us on that plane since they had a room with 900 suitcases which they were still sorting out, but they said they would try to find it and rush it to Air Canada in time for our late morning flight. Lo and behold, there it was on the carousel when we arrived, much to our surprise and delight.

They even gave us $120 towards the cost of the clothing we had to purchase to see us through the previous days and luckily we purchased sweaters since it was so cold when we arrived, although I was wearing sandals which seemed rather daft.

The joys of flying in the modern era! Not only did we have this to deal with but for some reason my hand luggage, a small rollerboard suitcase with basically my computer and a few other items fell foul of security people as they passed it through the x-ray machine at least six times finally pulling the whole thing apart and xraying the contents in half a dozen separate trays even after they inspected everything visually. Funnily enough it had all passed through Perth security two days earlier without a single query but those Sydney people are made of sterner stuff. One by one the items were cleared of potential terrorist threat in the case of my mouse and a rock I bought in New Zealand for my rock collection. But a lipstick and a tiny bottle of hand lotion had to be inspected and then bagged separately (they don’t even worry about that any more in New York when I travel there) but they confiscated my $30 special sunscreen and shampoo since they were 110 ml containers, even though half empty, but over the 100 ml size limit. Yes they had travelled from Canada and New Zealand and to and from Perth with no trouble for those security people but three men (yes it took three of them) in Sydney decided that they had to be checked more thoroughly. Even my hat beeped for the first time and had to be x-rayed.

Home, sweet home! I think I shall stay put for a bit and pray for Spring to come along soon.

 

From the Sunshine to the Rain Again

What a shock! After enjoying the sunny southern climes Downunder for the past five weeks, landing in Vancouver with a temperature of 4 degrees Celsius, along with rain and in some parts snow, was indeed a shock to the system.

Four very wonderful days were spent in the lovely city of Perth in Western Australia, but our return journey to Sydney was most unpleasant as we were caught in an Australia-wide baggage handlers’ wildcat strike which at first delayed our flight by six and a half hours, but when it finally departed it was without the luggage and just made it into Sydney before the airport curfew at 11pm. Having arrived at Perth airport at 7.30 am and spending a good part of the day there we were glad to finally arrive in Sydney even if it was midnight. I have to commend the Qantas people who managed to keep their cool and their politeness that day and throughout the next days as they tried to sort out the luggage mess which was no fault of theirs.

At Sydney airport we spoke to the Qantas baggage service people before we booked into our Canadian flight two days later and they gave us little hope of it being with us on that plane since they had a room with 900 suitcases which they were still sorting out, but they said they would try to find it and rush it to Air Canada in time for our late morning flight. Lo and behold, there it was on the carousel when we arrived, much to our surprise and delight.

They even gave us $120 towards the cost of the clothing we had to purchase to see us through the previous days and luckily we purchased sweaters since it was so cold when we arrived, although I was wearing sandals which seemed rather daft.

The joys of flying in the modern era! Not only did we have this to deal with but for some reason my hand luggage, a small rollerboard suitcase with basically my computer and a few other items fell foul of security people as they passed it through the x-ray machine at least six times finally pulling the whole thing apart and xraying the contents in half a dozen separate trays even after they inspected everything visually. Funnily enough it had all passed through Perth security two days earlier without a single query but those Sydney people are made of sterner stuff. One by one the items were cleared of potential terrorist threat in the case of my mouse and a rock I bought in New Zealand for my rock collection. But a lipstick and a tiny bottle of hand lotion had to be inspected and then bagged separately (they don’t even worry about that any more in New York when I travel there) but they confiscated my $30 special sunscreen and shampoo since they were 110 ml containers, even though half empty, but over the 100 ml size limit. Yes they had travelled from Canada and New Zealand and to and from Perth with no trouble for those security people but three men (yes it took three of them) in Sydney decided that they had to be checked more thoroughly. Even my hat beeped for the first time and had to be x-rayed.

Home, sweet home! I think I shall stay put for a bit and pray for Spring to come along soon.

 

This and That

Boeing 777

Flying is not much fun these days, that’s for sure. The first flight I ever took was from London to Dublin, in 1960 and I’m sure I thought it was one of the most exciting things I had ever done. Now it is simply a means to get from one place to another and the time spent in airports, after you have checked out the bookstore, is a complete waste. Let’s not talk about having to get half undressed, including your shoes, taking your laptop out of its case and everything going through Xray security. On the other side you scrabble to put on your shoes, find your jacket and hat and hand luggage and put your computer away while everyone behind you piles through on top of you.

Cathay Pacific seems to have purchased some new Boeing 777s for this route and thank heaven they did, since the old planes were basically falling apart, in the cabin at least. Last time we flew to New York, my seat belt didn’t work properly nor did the individual TV. They had two planes flying non-stop between Hong Kong and New York with a stop in Vancouver and thus no time to fix these things. Sadly I thought the B777 a most uncomfortable plane. Instead of the seatback reclining the seat slides forward and your knees hit the seat in front of you. There is no pocket in the back of the seat in front of you so nowhere to stow your book. Instead there is a pocket for the inflight magazine underneath your seat and not in the most convenient place.

The entertainment options were quite good after I finally figured out how to work the little TV with its very sophisticated remote control. There was a choice of several movies or TV programs and a wide selection of music programs. I read for a while and watched Mamma Mia which was entertaining enough.

We always fly Cathay Pacific to New York for they have one of the only two direct flights from Vancouver. Unfortunately they have changed their schedule so that it leaves at 10 pm and arrives the next day at 6 am! Isn’t that fun? My poor son-in-law had to give up his early morning fishing trip to pick us up and we got to go for almost 36 hours without sleep!

In addition it was bitterly cold, being minus 5 degrees Celsius when we arrived and quite a shock to the system but no rain so far.

One of the first things I had to do was to go with my granddaughter to the Build-a-Bear Workshop, which I will tell you more about next time. It is necessary to have one of these bears to join the virtual town Bearville, at Buildabear.com, a world with some similarities to Second Life, but for very young children in the five to ten year old range. My granddaughter already has an avatar there, Sofia Astronaut and today Joanna Astronaut (me) joined her in Sofia’s back garden. Yes, I have red hair in Bearville too. If you click on the image below to enlarge it, you will see Joanna and Sofia along with their furry friends Cleo and Cody.

You can’t take snapshots in Bearville the way you can in Second Life but I managed to capture this with Printscreen and trim it a little. It’s actually quite a hoot and entertains my five year old granddaughter no end. More later.

 

This and That

Boeing 777

Flying is not much fun these days, that’s for sure. The first flight I ever took was from London to Dublin, in 1960 and I’m sure I thought it was one of the most exciting things I had ever done. Now it is simply a means to get from one place to another and the time spent in airports, after you have checked out the bookstore, is a complete waste. Let’s not talk about having to get half undressed, including your shoes, taking your laptop out of its case and everything going through Xray security. On the other side you scrabble to put on your shoes, find your jacket and hat and hand luggage and put your computer away while everyone behind you piles through on top of you.

Cathay Pacific seems to have purchased some new Boeing 777s for this route and thank heaven they did, since the old planes were basically falling apart, in the cabin at least. Last time we flew to New York, my seat belt didn’t work properly nor did the individual TV. They had two planes flying non-stop between Hong Kong and New York with a stop in Vancouver and thus no time to fix these things. Sadly I thought the B777 a most uncomfortable plane. Instead of the seatback reclining the seat slides forward and your knees hit the seat in front of you. There is no pocket in the back of the seat in front of you so nowhere to stow your book. Instead there is a pocket for the inflight magazine underneath your seat and not in the most convenient place.

The entertainment options were quite good after I finally figured out how to work the little TV with its very sophisticated remote control. There was a choice of several movies or TV programs and a wide selection of music programs. I read for a while and watched Mamma Mia which was entertaining enough.

We always fly Cathay Pacific to New York for they have one of the only two direct flights from Vancouver. Unfortunately they have changed their schedule so that it leaves at 10 pm and arrives the next day at 6 am! Isn’t that fun? My poor son-in-law had to give up his early morning fishing trip to pick us up and we got to go for almost 36 hours without sleep!

In addition it was bitterly cold, being minus 5 degrees Celsius when we arrived and quite a shock to the system but no rain so far.

One of the first things I had to do was to go with my granddaughter to the Build-a-Bear Workshop, which I will tell you more about next time. It is necessary to have one of these bears to join the virtual town Bearville, at Buildabear.com, a world with some similarities to Second Life, but for very young children in the five to ten year old range. My granddaughter already has an avatar there, Sofia Astronaut and today Joanna Astronaut (me) joined her in Sofia’s back garden. Yes, I have red hair in Bearville too. If you click on the image below to enlarge it, you will see Joanna and Sofia along with their furry friends Cleo and Cody.

You can’t take snapshots in Bearville the way you can in Second Life but I managed to capture this with Printscreen and trim it a little. It’s actually quite a hoot and entertains my five year old granddaughter no end. More later.

 

Vacations — the Downsides

Apart from the horrors of flying nowadays, what with increased security, including denuding yourself in front of your fellow passengers of your shoes, your coat and jacket, hat, belts, etc, unpacking and repacking your laptop, spending more time at the airport than in the air, the fact that they don’t feed you anymore and you are constantly searching for something vaguely resembling food in the airports, along with the folks who think the one carry-on bag per person applies to everyone except them and after they have filled the overhead bins with their three bags plus their duty free purchases and there is no space for your one bag as per regulations so you are forced to put it under the seat in front and now there is no room for your feet, there are some other downsides to going on vacation.

The thing that bothered me most of all on this vacation was my internet connection. Now it was not all bad by any means. At the hotel, the free WiFi connection worked like a dream and I kept up with everything quite nicely.

But connection on the ship was another matter. I knew that it was expensive as I had done it on a previous trip. Plan 1, $55 for 110 minutes. or Plan 2, $100 for 260 minutes. Last time there was no difficulty with Plan 1 since I did most things off-line and only went on-line when necessary. This time I seemed to spend more time on-line and the speed was excruciatingly slow. So within three days I had upgraded to Plan 2.

But then came the really sad story. I have a very good virus/spam/malware program on my computer provided by my internet company in Vancouver. Up popped a little window, Virus Alert, you have been infected by Email-worm.Win32.Brontok.q. What the heck? This had never happened to me before, so I was pretty clueless. However I decided to run my anti-virus program. Oh, oh. Worms cannot be disinfected they can only be deleted or quarantined.

So I ran the scanning program and forty-five minutes later it showed 4 infected files. Bye, bye. Deleted. I hoped they were not important. A couple were music files but I keep my iPod library on the desktop so who knows what they were. Gone now. Another forty-five minute scan later and the computer was clear. Thank goodness, but two hours wasted by this whole schemozzle. So where did this thing come from? Why from some other WiFi user on the ship’s network who probably had no idea that his laptop was infected and obviously did not have a decent anti-virus program.

Two more days went by, then we had a repeat performance. I suppose I was infected by the same computer and after the time-consuming process of deleting eleven files and running two scans I decided I would not use the laptop again, but use the ship’s computers instead.

Unfortunately the only browser option was Internet Explorer and not even the latest version with tabs, but some prehistoric version. The keyboards were so beaten up with not all the keys working so they were horrible to use and I had no history in the browser or favourites or my bloglines feed or any of the things that I take for granted on my laptop. Eventually I got so fed up, I even left unused minutes of my time. I was ready to tear out my hair.

So now to the return flights, yes flights, plural, to Vancouver. We flew via Las Vegas and yes they do have slot machines all over the airport terminal there and people were playing them continuously. Not my idea of fun so I resisted the urge to make my fortune or more likely make someone else rich.

Eventually we landed in Vancouver and surprise, surprise, our luggage actually arrived at the same time. Our friend picked us up at the airport and told us the sorry saga of the happenings while we were away. Apparently our house alarm was malfunctioning and going off so the alarm company kept phoning him. One of the motion detectors seemed to be malfunctioning, so after checking three times he told them to ignore the alarm if that zone rang again. Unfortunately on the last of his journeys to our house his car was hit by a speeding car, rendered undrivable and had to be towed away. Luckily he and his wife were not hurt, nor the other idiot who hit him at a stop sign, no less. So he met us in his wife’s car and it will be some weeks before it is repaired. As you can imagine I felt very badly about that, since they were looking after our house, although we do the same for them when they are away.

To put the final crowning touch I came down with a horrific cold the next day. Ah the joys of flying with hundreds of others in a small space and breathing recirculated air.

I think I’ll just stay put for a while. Vacations are fun but it’s very nice to be home again.

 

Vacations — the Downsides

Apart from the horrors of flying nowadays, what with increased security, including denuding yourself in front of your fellow passengers of your shoes, your coat and jacket, hat, belts, etc, unpacking and repacking your laptop, spending more time at the airport than in the air, the fact that they don’t feed you anymore and you are constantly searching for something vaguely resembling food in the airports, along with the folks who think the one carry-on bag per person applies to everyone except them and after they have filled the overhead bins with their three bags plus their duty free purchases and there is no space for your one bag as per regulations so you are forced to put it under the seat in front and now there is no room for your feet, there are some other downsides to going on vacation.

The thing that bothered me most of all on this vacation was my internet connection. Now it was not all bad by any means. At the hotel, the free WiFi connection worked like a dream and I kept up with everything quite nicely.

But connection on the ship was another matter. I knew that it was expensive as I had done it on a previous trip. Plan 1, $55 for 110 minutes. or Plan 2, $100 for 260 minutes. Last time there was no difficulty with Plan 1 since I did most things off-line and only went on-line when necessary. This time I seemed to spend more time on-line and the speed was excruciatingly slow. So within three days I had upgraded to Plan 2.

But then came the really sad story. I have a very good virus/spam/malware program on my computer provided by my internet company in Vancouver. Up popped a little window, Virus Alert, you have been infected by Email-worm.Win32.Brontok.q. What the heck? This had never happened to me before, so I was pretty clueless. However I decided to run my anti-virus program. Oh, oh. Worms cannot be disinfected they can only be deleted or quarantined.

So I ran the scanning program and forty-five minutes later it showed 4 infected files. Bye, bye. Deleted. I hoped they were not important. A couple were music files but I keep my iPod library on the desktop so who knows what they were. Gone now. Another forty-five minute scan later and the computer was clear. Thank goodness, but two hours wasted by this whole schemozzle. So where did this thing come from? Why from some other WiFi user on the ship’s network who probably had no idea that his laptop was infected and obviously did not have a decent anti-virus program.

Two more days went by, then we had a repeat performance. I suppose I was infected by the same computer and after the time-consuming process of deleting eleven files and running two scans I decided I would not use the laptop again, but use the ship’s computers instead.

Unfortunately the only browser option was Internet Explorer and not even the latest version with tabs, but some prehistoric version. The keyboards were so beaten up with not all the keys working so they were horrible to use and I had no history in the browser or favourites or my bloglines feed or any of the things that I take for granted on my laptop. Eventually I got so fed up, I even left unused minutes of my time. I was ready to tear out my hair.

So now to the return flights, yes flights, plural, to Vancouver. We flew via Las Vegas and yes they do have slot machines all over the airport terminal there and people were playing them continuously. Not my idea of fun so I resisted the urge to make my fortune or more likely make someone else rich.

Eventually we landed in Vancouver and surprise, surprise, our luggage actually arrived at the same time. Our friend picked us up at the airport and told us the sorry saga of the happenings while we were away. Apparently our house alarm was malfunctioning and going off so the alarm company kept phoning him. One of the motion detectors seemed to be malfunctioning, so after checking three times he told them to ignore the alarm if that zone rang again. Unfortunately on the last of his journeys to our house his car was hit by a speeding car, rendered undrivable and had to be towed away. Luckily he and his wife were not hurt, nor the other idiot who hit him at a stop sign, no less. So he met us in his wife’s car and it will be some weeks before it is repaired. As you can imagine I felt very badly about that, since they were looking after our house, although we do the same for them when they are away.

To put the final crowning touch I came down with a horrific cold the next day. Ah the joys of flying with hundreds of others in a small space and breathing recirculated air.

I think I’ll just stay put for a while. Vacations are fun but it’s very nice to be home again.