Hello again readers,
It's been a while. I recently took a trip, during which I gathered valuable new parenting experience, plus renewed appreciation for old principles, such as "never store your glassware fewer than six feet above the floor."
But more relevant to this post, I also learned about the various airlines available for transporting people to and from our lovely country. I'll rate them below for your convenience.
American Airlines:
The good - American Airlines has the perkiest group of workers I've ever seen trapped together at 40,000 feet subject to the whims of several hundred exhausted, stressed-out travelers who passed the "I hate the world and everything in it" stage about two hours ago.
An American Airlines staffer came by about every half hour to offer food, or drinks, or more drinks, or garbage disposal. And they smiled like they really meant it (as opposed to the usual airline staffer smile, which is more like, "My job requires me to pretend I don't hate you. Screw with me, and I'll make sure you're in front of the two most colicky babies aboard for the rest of your flight.")
The bad - No mini-television sets on the back of the seat in front. American Airlines, who cares about getting a third cup of orange juice in a timely fashion when their school-age child is going into hour eight of an international flight with no television??? As if any beverage makes hearing "but NOW are we landing?" for the 5,000th time any easier (OK, vodka might have, but they didn't offer me any).
To be fair, they did have TV sets along the ceilings, one every few rows. On the other hand, they were broadcasting the most non-child-friendly content I've seen outside Game of Thrones. I couldn't hear the movie (no point paying $5 for a headset when your child is just going to yank it out of your ears, the better for you to hear them ask, "but NOW??"), but it was hard not to notice the part where the female lead's ex attempted to murder her and their child by burning their house down.
Overall rating:
B -
British Airways:
The good - TV sets! With children's programming, and with a variety of decent movies for adults (the Hobbit, Les Miserables, etc). Yay!!
The bad - I realize the whole kosher food thing can be complicated, but it was kind of absurd getting a super-kosher breakfast complete with dairy products in which the entree was (glatt kosher!) chicken stir-fry.
An explanation for readers not familiar with the ins and outs of Jew-Food: many of the rules about keeping food kosher involve completely separating milk and meat. True, chicken wasn't originally considered "meat," but it's been in the "meat" category for at least 1,500 years now. Serving it next to butter and cream is a fairly big kosher no-no.
So that was funny. Not a big deal, but amusing.
But where they really lost points was with beverage choice. I appreciate your British pride, British Airways, but offering tea as the only caffeinated beverage is taking it way too far. I have it on good authority that even British people can prefer coffee.
To be fair, they did offer diet coke toward the end of the flight. But that was several hours too late for me to avoid entering a no-caffeine funk (and no, drinking the disgusting leaf-water more commonly known as tea was not an option). Plus, it turns out that their diet coke is terrible for some reason. Maybe it's the British version?
Overall rating:
B +
El Al:
The good - TV sets again! At least on the flight back. Also, staff were genuinely friendly, if less frequently seen patrolling the aisles than the American Airlines set.
Also, I was most frequently offered coffee on El Al, which gives it a few extra points in my book.
The bad - Four things:
* No TVs on the flight out.
* Terrible pre-flight ad consisting of various El Al staffers talking about how El Al is like a home. Or maybe how Israel is like a home? Either way, the most disturbing part was when the guy signaling to the plane turns around mid-signal to explain why Israel (El Al?) is like home. Really, El Al, could you not think of a better ad to show immediately pre-flight than one showing your staff pausing in the middle of critical, life-and-death tasks in order to blather? That disturbs me.
(The ad ended with "home is where I know that everything will be OK." So I guess not talking about Israel, then.)
* Staff allowed several groups of British teenagers coming to Israel with Zionist youth groups to board the plane, and then stubbornly refused to drug their beverages.
Seriously, that was the noisiest flight I've ever been on, ever, by a long shot - and it was from 11:30 pm to 5:15 am. The various groups settled down somewhat at around 3 a.m., by which I mean that they stopped shouting to each other across the plane and talking loudly in large groups, and shifted to talking at a normal decibel level in small groups. Until we started landing, at which point the same moron who had shouted "Get me off this plane!!" repeatedly during takeoff starting shouting things like, "We're going to crash!" and "Guys it's totally like Final Destination!"
I'm not sure what was worse - spending an overnight flight feeling like I was being repeatedly stabbed in the eardrums, or the dawning realization that I'm now the person glaring at all the self-centered, hormonal young people who insist on having fun instead of sitting quietly, which makes me officially Old.
* Beverage service stopped about halfway through because the flight got all shaky. What's the point of Jews controlling the weather if there's so much turbulence on an El Al flight to Israel that I can't get my diet coke??
Oh, and I forgot one:
* They put me in the bulkhead row because I was traveling with a baby - even though my baby was too big to get a bulkhead-row bassinet. So basically, out of consideration for the difficulties involved in traveling with young children, they gave me one of the very few seats with no room on the floor for bags, no personal TV, a huge TV showing flight progress on an endless loop glaring directly into my eyeballs, and a tray table that could only be used by a person who isn't holding a sleeping toddler on their lap. Uh - thanks?
I did enjoy the extra leg room.
Overall rating: C +
