Waving the flag, it not flying it

Today, for, I think, the first time in 15 years I took a US carrier to fly across the pond. Not BA this time but AA. It was like going back in time, maybe about 8 years or so. Ugly, wide seats, no flat beds, dodgy TV screens and a limited choice of films. Normally I love to fly and the time passes in a whirl but today’s 10 hour flight seemed to last a week – every time I moved in the seat, it reclined, whether I wanted it to or not; the headrest was in exactly the right position to cause neck ache. Listen to me complaining about flying, let alone flying in business class! How easy it is to get used to the good things in life. I kept looking out the window to see if I could see Simon Moores towing a banner, but no luck.

There are plainly a few reasons why BA is the most profitable airline in the world – some of that will be to do with laying off vast numbers of staff – but one of them must be that they’ve invested enough in the business class cabin to make people want to fly with them.

It’s funny how quickly you get used to such upgrades in seats, service and performance. Those upgrades aren’t really different to, say, the change from dial-up to broadband – once you have the latter, why go back? I consciously avoid places that don’t have fast connections in the hotel doing everything I can not to use dial-up. The last time I used dial-up was early 2000. I’d rather not surf than mess around with dial-up. Like I said, how quickly do you get used to that – when I first used Compuserve it was at 1200 baud, then 9600 … I remember when 28.8k modems came along how fast that seemed. Now I complain if my BT ADSL line runs at less than 2Mb/s.

I’m over here for dinner, back overnight tomorrow. Can’t wait for an overnight flight in those seats, am sure it will be a blast. Look for me red-eyed with a crick in my neck on Friday.