My British Airways experience - a survey response

I was asked to take survey in London while waiting in Gatwick.  Sure, why not?  It's not like I didn't have time...

(Where British Airways puts its coach passengers)

 Now, the survey is offically taken up by BAA, which I suspect has something to do with sheep, or airports, or sheep in airports, which is definitely what one feels like trying to navigate the incredibly-badly-laid-out airport.  Changing flights at Gatwick isn't as bad as, say, changing flights at Heathrow (an experience in queuing so bad that even the English can't stand it), but it's very clear that BA has the main hub, and everybody else gets to spend a half-hour walking down randomly-twisting corridors.

That said, at least the folks at security are basically friendly.  Well, until you get to security, at which point they are your typical Rude Security Screeners(tm).  But I swear, if there's a Nobel Peace Prize to be given out... screw Jimmy Carter.  Give it to that guy standing at the cubicle-divider wall before the main screening queue, whose job is to decide who needs to be accelerated, versus who has time to stand in line.  I swear they recruit these guys from a limited pool of super-agents bred and raised on a diet of orange juice, methamphetamines, and Barney the Dinosaur shows.  And, it works.  Somehow, peoples' patience gets a last little boost before going into "jerk, take your watch off"-land.

Now, as I had been through this, when accosted by Survey Lady, you know, the one who nods a lot, on the mistaken assumption that this means that you will agree with everything she says (try again, lady, I get harder salesmanship than that at my local gas station), I had no problem with taking a survey about BA.

After all, they'd lost my luggage on the outbound flight.  Yes, I'll be happy to take your little survey...

Well, on that outbound flight, my wife and I got in involuntary upgrade to "something in the middle class," which was actually pretty nice.  But I kept looking backwards into the coach class, crammed in like sardines, thinking, "wow, the English caste system at work."  First class, of course, looked like something from a cruise-liner, upgrade-coach was nice... basically what one takes for granted on any other airline (including such bastions of international luxury as MALEV, the Hungarian airline, or, say, Delta), and regular coach looked like something out of a bad joke -- you know, the class that other airlines depict in their commercials as a contrast to their own roomy and polite service?

That's the class I flew on my return flight.

The flight that started an hour and a half late, because they couldn't find somebody's luggage.  (At this point, I strongly suspected that some bright bean said "hey, they're surveying this flight, we'd better not lose that yank's bags again!")  And we took off, after everybody had put their trays and seats in their regular upright positions.

Except for my chair, which was broken, of course, meaning that if I allowed any of my torso mass to participate in (9.8m/s^2) potential energy, the resulting shift in mass dropped my seat backwards right into the obnoxious french girl's space.  Which is okay, since she got her malevolently-grinned revenge by kicking me in the back all flight.  Okay, fair's fair.

And the tray more-or-less stayed upright,given that the tray arm was broken.  It definitely did a better job of staying upright than it did of staying horizontal, since any unsupported mass caused the tray to dip alarmingly to the right and forward.  Later, when attempting to obtain calories, I would cleverly find a way of balancing said tray on the arm of my chair, thus supporting it enough to (gulp) eat.

None of this held a candle, on the other hand, to the experience of having water drip out of the ceiling onto my hand during takeoff.  I and another passenger were assured by the steward, whose face was a pitiable "please don't complain, they pull my kidneys out my nose if anybody complains," that this was perfectly normal, and happened whenever the airplane went from a hot place to a cold place, or a cold place to a hot place, as ice in the ceiling froze and unfroze.

In other words, whenever the airplane gained or lost altitude.  No, really, I'm not making this up.  There may be some snark, but every bit of this is absolutely factual and true.

So, after an alarming takeoff experience, including the inability of yours truly to actually rest himself against his seat during the ascent, we were airborne.  At this point, the headphones came out, including the absolutely charming family next to and in front of me, who had never flown anywhere before, and was flying to Dallas so that they could watch their son marry an American and cement his long-sought escape from anything having ot do with England.  I read somewhere yesterday that something on the order of 4000 people per week are trying to leave England for good, and that a visa to live somewhere else can cost as little as 1500 pounds.  What a deal!  Meaning, I guess, that England is peopled with a large number of people trying to save up 1500 pounds in order to escape the country?  Anyway, apparently said son managed to save up his pence and do it.  And they were so generally sweet and naive (they even carefully examined all the safety literature, and took several minutes to figure out the seatbelts) that I couldn't bear to snark out loud during the flight.

Except, of course, insofar as I could not take part in the bliss of escaping reality via headphones... because my seat had no volume.  No, seriously, the volume didn't work.  And once the windows were closed, I had no light to read by, either... because the light that was supposed to shine upon my seat was also broken, and every minute or so would drift back down to shine upon my aforesaid neighbor as she tried to sleep.  She insisted that she'd be perfectly happy to reset the light for me every minute and a half for the duration of the flight... but I turned her down, and instead comforted myself with knowledge that something entertaining was being shown on the flight (a pretty good range of stuff, actually), if I could only manage to read lips.

Actually, in 2005, 352,000 people left England for good.  If one is among that portion of the population that can do basic 5th-grade math, we see that this is, in fact, over 6700 people per week.  They are leaving, I'm convinced, not merely because the British government continues to tighten the screws on its little Orwellian wet dream with the Anti-Social Behavior Police (god help you if you sing opera in the shower or refuse to smile at your neighbors)... but because of the food.

Yes, that's right.  They serve food on airplanes.  ::Shudder::

Actually, later on, the sandwich wasn't that awful, being based on an Italian model that's almost impossible to screw up, even for the English.  The spread, on the other hand, containing "real English butter" (meaning that Lurpak is somehow inferior?), also stated, in much smaller words, "with added vegetable oil."  I passed on the obviously doctored hydrogenated veggie oil, known as margarine.  The steward asked what I'd like to drink, tea or coffee.  I chose coffee, being a yank, and made the mistake of telling the steward that I drank it black.

Well, after one sip, that got fixed post-haste.  I'm afraid to see what my dentist bill will come out to be, but suffice it to say that I imbibed the sum total sugar production of an entire Mexican Coca-Cola factory.

The main course was a choice between Chicken Curry and something called Cottage Pie.  I chose the Cottage Pie, both out of a sense of fascination, and also because all the actual English natives had chosen the curry, meaning that the curry was "sold out" by the time that the cart got to the fourth row of "sardine class," aka, me.

"Would you like the curry or the cottage pie?"

"Well, I've never heard of cottage pie before, so I'll try that."

"I think you'll like it, it's got minced beef."

It did, as well as the boiled remains of two string beans and a pseudo-equilateral triangle chip of something that could be described as a carrot that had been through bad times.  All of this sat under a mysteriously dry and crumbly covering of baked potato.

In other words, it was exactly what I thought it was.  Fortunately, my mother, rest her soul, was the sort of appallingly bad cook who actually burned peas on a semi-regular basis (the base of my family's still-popular "fried peas" story), and I was therefore well-armed to survive my encounter with Cottage Pie.

"Did you like it?"  She asked as she came by to take trays.  This was immediately forestalled with her protestations of "It's really not bad, is it," said in a way as to beg me to agree that the food was not actually bad.  Insofar as it involved ground meat of some description, with a flavor primarily of grease and some reddish flavoring, I assured her that it was, in fact, NOT BAD.  This was, technically, not a lie, but is referred to as dissembling, insofar as the food was not actually, so far as I could tell, host to a colony of either mold or e coli, and therefore could safely be consumed without an alert from the World Health Organization.  Therefore, having committed an official Act of Charity regarding the feelings of said steward (and this is clearly BA's strategy:  "please don't complain, because the poor stewards are trying so hard, and they might actually cry"), I don't have to add this statement to my next Confession.

6700 people per week.  2005 numbers.  Up from merely 4700 or so the year before.  Lord knows what would happen if the average Englishman took a video camera and reported back home about the quality and availability of food that any minimum-wage-earning American takes for granted.  Let alone the supposedly excellent cooking in Australia (I haven't been there, but I've heard that the food is great).

All that done, I thought to myself, "self, I am traveling with a laptop.  And perhaps, since I wasn't able to call My Darling Wife enroute to the airport, I could tell her that I am safely on the plane if I pay for an internet connection and manage to avoid any electronics damage from the water dripping from the ceiling."  So I inquired to the steward as to whether internet service was available, and the cost. 

"I'm sorry.  It is available, but unfortunately, not in World Traveller Class.  Do you need to charge your laptop?"

Yes, Virginia, there was also no means to charge a laptop on this chair, which was so old that it was made while they were still installing ashtrays in airplane seats (I played with said ashtray for a few moments out of hideous boredom).  This was, also, "World Traveller Class."  I have to admit that I was simply floored by the institutionalized insult.

"No, no thank you."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, thank you, never mind."

World.  Traveller.  Class.

Never mind that American Airlines, the company that every mammal in the DFW area loves to hate, is getting "it's about damned time" comments because it's finally putting in wifi connections on its flights... and that, therefore, I can be a State Traveller, from, say, Dallas, to that internationally known lap of luxury known as Midland/Odessa, and check email on the flight.  On British Airways, I'm now officially a World Traveler, and I can't even get an internet connection if I pay for it... because there isn't even an accomodation to let me pay for it.  Because, as we all know, in-flight internet connections are a brand-new service that only someone in first or business class might possibly be able to afford on a flight.

Oh, wait, that was 1998.  Yeah.

This time around, I'm happy to say that we landed safely, albeit uncomfortably, in the seat that would not stop moving, and that this time around, the bags were delivered on time and with a relatively mild selection of damaged goods (a completely shattered mug).

So what's my reaction to British Airways?  What will I write in their customer response section?

Nothing, because BAA is too damned smart to give us a space like that.  Instead, it's purely multiple-choice.

Am I really angry at BA, angry enough to fire off a letter somewhere?  Nope.  What I really am, is sad, that an entire country has to put up with such an incredible joke of an airline.  Put aside the broken chair, lack of audio, and sadly-broken lamp.  Disregard that torture known as English Cooking.  This is an airline where the stewards expect the passengers to accept that water dripping from the ceiling during the flight is normal and to be expected.  And, that the English are beat-down enough to accept that and put up with it, one suspects from a simple lack of any viable alternative.  (Maybe Virgin's better?  One wonders, given the recent price-fixing scandal.)

So am I angry?  No, I'm not.  What I am is appalled.

6700 people per week ain't nearly enough.  I've got three houses for sale on my block, folks, and a half-dozen more in my neighborhood at least.  Come on out to Texas, folks -- I've got to introduce you to this thing known as a quesadilla.