Over the course of the last 20 years I have done a lot of flying - so much in fact that if I were to retire to a hut in the forest and eat fallen leaves for the rest of my life, I'm sure my lifetime carbon footprint would still be a massive yeti-sized one. I mean obviously in comparison to people who work for multinational companies, I haven't done that much flying, but I do seem to have spent an inordinate amount of time on aeroplanes.
Twice in that period, I have found myself in business class - once when a mate was giving me and my then-partner a lift to Porto airport for our flight to the UK, and he was so late picking us up and getting us to the airport that we were forcibly bumped up as they were the only seats left. Which left my irritation at his somewhat irresponsible approach to timekeeping thrown back in my face in the best way; and the second time when I flew to a conference with my then boss and he bumped me up with his frequent flyer points for the Hartford to Chicago leg. Neither of these flights were particularly long, so I didn't get much benefit from the excitement of being in the front seats (and when flying domestically on a US airline, the business class experience is more or less the same as economy class anywhere else).
But now, thanks to getting a gig working on a contract with a seemingly unlimited budget for travel, I am going to outstrip those experiences very rapidly. In fact all of my upcoming flights will (I think) be on business class, so I will soon be able to go as far as to make comparisons with each airlines posh services. My trip to Nepal on Monday (and subsequent return), for example, will see me fly on 5 entirely different airlines - and so I will, among other things, be in a position to rank the Tarom business class experience to that of Singapore airlines (not a comparison that I expect will be especially kind to Tarom, but I remain open to the possibility of a surprise). Who knows - I may be able to blog directly from my seat, such are the hidden and untold riches of such travel.
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7 comments:
For the dismal "service" of Tarom to outgun the legendary hospitality of Singapore would indeed be a queer feat.
I once went business class on Emirates - a press freebie. You got menus and free gifts and as much as you could drink and everything. But there was no such thing as a free business class lunch. I had to write a piece about the airline for my trade ragazine and not say anything bad about them. But after all those freebies, how could I possibly have said anything bad about them? And even if I had, my editor would have cut them out and not let me go on any more cushie free trips.
Could you be a bit more specific about what this "contract" involves? Your blog is worth reading but like many blogs, novels, diaries, people down the pub and so forth seems to have this speical English coyness about actually saying what it is you do for a living...Of course it is none of our business, so a complete lack of any reply to this might not come as a surprise.
Says someone who posts as 'anonymous'. What's this "special coyness" about telling us who you are?
If you'd stopped after the first sentence oh coy-one, I'd have been inclined to respond, but I am significantly less inclined to do so, after you've somehow managed to make me a specific example of a wild generalisation. And as indie pop says, you're hardly being that revealing yourself are you?
Singapore Airlines Business Class is the best by far.... They have a bigger screen for the TV then the one I have at home (on the new planes).... Qatar, Emirates, cathay and even Malaysian Airlines are very good. Overall all european carriers are quite bad... Nothing sucks more then Lufthansa....
I think this is one of the good things in working for an MNC, you travel quite a lot :)
I always go by CFR (Romanian railways). The screen is a 2m by 1m window displaying the beautiful panorama of the Romanian countryside. You can't beat that.
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