Airlines I Will Fly

Thirty minutes into a 15-hour plane ride and all I can continue to think about is "What is it about Asian airlines that makes them so great?" An outlet to plug in my computer on a plane, for one.

I admit my sample size is fairly small and I am excluding certain data points. Royal Nepal Airlines gets cut for thinking even though the weather radar failed, they could still make it fine back to Nepal from Bangladesh. That was not the case as I saw my dinner levitate in the air above me when we hit a thunderhead and the plane suddenly dropped a few hundred feet. Turning around to Dhaka, bad. Putting me up in a coach-roach laden hotel, very bad.

Air Pakistan gets the boot for confiscating my Discman batteries and my being picked up in a truck at the airport in Lahore (my host family had been car-jacked the previous day). Well, maybe that is not really Air Pakistan's fault, but at the very least they should have looked into branding their airline better.

Thai Airways, on the other hand, has always been a prize-winning plant. First, handing out dried, fried octopus instead of peanuts is pure genius. You don't even half to like it, you just have to appreciate that you are flying over the Himalayas eating octopus.

In misplaced patriotism (or just successful lobbying) the State Department will not fly a foreign carrier where a domestic one is present. So for much of my time traveling (not time-traveling), I was stuck with flying a domestic carrier as bloated and sour as their stewardesses. Cramped quarters, short-tempered stewardesses, bad food--your standard airline complaints.

Contrast that with my customer service experience at Cathay Pacific--the gate agents and counter agents practically fell all over themselves greeting me, checking me in, answering my every question. Sure they "lost my bag" and "they didn't know which city it was in" but they "felt really bad about it." It is all in the presentation--an agent approached me at the baggage kiosk, asked me who I was and confirmed that my bag did not arrive. He walked me over to his supervisor who had $500 HK ($70 US) waiting to give me so that I could buy toiletries and told me that I could file an additional complaint for the price of a new set of clothes so I could attend my meetings. (Which thanks to Zara I was able to do in an hour for $250 US--quite a feat in Hong Kong).

Finally, we come to my new love, Korean Air. I admit my class of service, in airline parlance, is a step higher than normal, but let me just detail why thirty-minutes into the flight I am forever converted.

First, free internets at the lounges (really pretty standard, but I feel like the internets should always come first). Second, the main steward greeted me when I sat down, knew my name, bowed very low, and thanked me for coming on the flight. We chatted for 20-30 seconds. (Eat that America.) Third, hot stewardesses. Cliché, I know. Chauvinistic, I know. But, men, am I wrong? Am I wrong?

Fourth, in-flight entertainment and it deserves its own paragraph. I haven't really explored it that much, but every seat (even the prolls in coach) have their own screen. Movies, corporate programming, music, updated tracking maps, and views from bottom and front-mounted cameras. Games like you would expect a South Korean would have. What, you want to play multi-player--NO PLOBLEM. What better way to cross the Pacific than to get in your base, killing your dudes? How ironic that just as my flight is tracing the path Soviet bombers would take over the pole, I can play a video game Ruskies created (and the west stole and marketed to great effect and profit).

Finally, the chair. These is probably more a function of a better class, but United is not pulling ish like this on their long-haul flights. Twelve-million degrees of adjustment, including into a fully reclining bed, built in massage capabilities, and a power plug. I could blow-dry my hair right now. I am not going to, but the point is, I feel more secure know that I could. Instead I will do work most of the flight. And blog. I love it. Now