Tag: b747

April 2001 Part 4. I take on Our Sharon, a Qantas cabin crew of many years and reach a compromise worthy of the UN.

We now see so many repeat customers, mostly nice and a few less than. If I were a Mormon, then I would have a chance of hitting a REAL fortune, as we have a Mormon family gang with us again, from Seattle too, of all places.

One of the daughters has dumped her husband (who came last time and I thought he was a weed) and is now obviously in the market for another and I get on like a house on fire with mother, who has all the lolly (00000dles of it), so have already suggested that I come over to the other side and become a client and told them I would know how to get them upgraded into suites everywhere, which they could easily afford anyway, but of course don’t …. I meantersay, Mom is presumably footing the bill for the current outing and not getting much in the way of change from $200,000 and they have come back every year for the last 4 …. so do the maths yourselves and u can see what a nice idea it would be to become part of the family ! Ah me, such is life!! Don’t know what my friends in Iran would make of it all – their eyes just cross completely when I tell them how much money these people are spending.

I really don’t understand some of these airlines. Here we are, all 15 of us in the Business Class cabin of a 747 and the bloody crew determines that we have 4 hours flight from Darwin to Singapore and it is 4:30pm and we should eat dinner immediately. Basicaly, they just want to get the meal service done and over with, so they can skive off the rest of the flight. Ha I say to that. I tell the Japanese/0z f/a that  No, I wud like to eat later – throws her for a complete loop – do I or don’t I want to eat ? – yes, but not now – not now ? but we are serving now … we start to get into a loop -she gives up – next thing, Big Sharon, a seasoned Sinneysider comes in to the scene – but we are cooking the food now …. so I says, well bugger the hot food, I’ll just have a salad and some cheese later – how about that? Hnmunm – almost seemed something that was going to cause a riot in the galley.

GIVE ME A BREAK – I point out nicely, that with 4 hours and 15 pax and it being only late afternoon, they could do the whole meal service (which on Qantas Biz is not exactly extensive) in one hour flat. We settle on the salad and cheese compromise. Am v pleased to observe that there are 3 other pax who did not eat either – felt like pointing THAT out to KoKo (yup, a female high executioner) and our Sharon, as further proof but felt my point was made.

Changi airport, Singapore continues to amaze me. I meantersay, I was off the plane, did a longish walk to immigration, which was deserted as always, through them, with the offer of a candy too, around the corner to the first bag belt, where the Biz bags had already come up first of course (they wud be AMAZED to hear that this is not ALWAYS the case elsewhere) and through the non-existent customs and straight out to a waiting cool taxi, driven by a man in white gloves and all this within 20 mins of getting off the plane. Here it’s the norm – almost anywhere else it’s called a miracle.

And for those of u who want touches of Ammurrica home, there at the departure gate next morning, they are playing WHEEL OF FORTUNE with Vanna and all -Some of you would never have boarded the flight ….

Now later, in flight from Singapore to Kota Kinabula on the Malaysian end of Borneo. And wud you bloody believe, on a Malaysian 737, with all of 20 pax and leaving at 1005 for a 2:25 mins flight, they have done LUNCH immediately after take off – I may have to go down to the back galley and have a few gentle words of wisdom here, as the crew is all young and may benefit from my road warrior status. And why would Malaysian Airlines, with all its sources of cheap labor, have its sick bags made in Switzerland ??  Inquiring minds want to know (or who got some huge kickback for the contract, cos it sure is fishy ….)   Thomas, being Swiss, do you have an insight?

Had a very nice night, thank you chez Raffles. Richard Yap, me mate there, was waiting and I was whisked off to my suite without having to stop for a second. It’s kinda frightening when the lady butler was standing outside the door to the suite, waiting for me and my retinue and she had to show me how to insert the key into the lock and turn it – nothing unusual about that -insert key and turn – they just wanted to make sure I understood ! Oh dear oh lor, I must be looking even worse than I thought. I then had to have a detailed, inch by inch explanation of exactly what worked what inside the room, most of which I cudda probably worked out for myself. They did presume I could turn the taps on and off and flush the loo, but otherwise nothing went unexplained. Best thing was the arrival a few mins later of a tray with two nice flutes of champagne and the caviar from Iran that I had left with Richard while I went to Oz (see above ref Oz health regs – they wudda swiped it and incinerated it too, which would have caused many tears before bedtime!). So we had a maxi caviar feast as it had to be eaten and I was determined that it WOULD be eaten and none left to waste.

Consequently, did not need dinner and fell into bed at 2130 and finally slept til the alarm went off at 0645. No such thing as a lie in is permitted anywhere on my sked,and in fact 0645 almost qualifies as one!

Yet more to come from the top of Malaysia…what do you know about orang outangs?

April 2001. Part 1. New Year in Iran and goldfish take to the air.

Hi Readers, from Dubai – back in civilization, after some days in the wilderness aka Iran.   We have now successfully navigated all the political and geographical twists and turns for having a B757, filled to the brim with American uber-millionaires, who were very warmly welcomed to a country whose capital city has whole buildings proclaiming DEATH TO AMERICA etc etc.

Imagine if you can, checking in with Iran Aseman Airlines at Isfahan with a 32kg suitcase and being asked ” Is that all ?”

Imagine asking for an aisle seat on the emergency exit and being told ” That’s a good idea …”

Imagine a B727 with a picture of Ayatollah Khomenei on the front bulkhead, staring down the cabin at everyone and looking totally constipated, just daring you to even think about having a good time.

Imagine a preflight p.a. invoking the will of Allah, inshallering you about even getting off the ground here, let alone flying and actually landing at the other end.

Imagine being seated in your emergency exit aisle seat, with a young guy sitting in the window seat, who starts to talk and confesses that he doesn’t like flying and therefore as there is no one in the middle seat, he will move into that so that we can be elbow to elbow and leave the window seat empty. So I suggest that HE sit on the aisle and I will take the window, which is done and then a young girl boards with a glass bowl full of goldfish (I’m not making this up) and the steward thinks she should sit with this on the emergency exit, so he moves over next to me and we are now happily squashed, with me up against the window, which is just what I was trying to avoid.

Then Iranian/Islamic sensitivities come into play and it’s not nice for a young woman, looking like a nun in training, to be up against two guys, cos who knows what un-Islamic ideas they may have (and in front of the all-seeing eyes of a dozen goldfish no less…) so she is seat swapped with a guy two rows ahead, so exit the goldfish, who are so crowded that they are likely to be belly up before we reach Dubai and our new friend arrives and proceeds to chatter too loudly in Farsi (not one of the romance languages of the world) in the middle seat for the whole one hour to Dubai.

Well, if you got all that, your imagination is quite good.

In Dubai, flights such as these arrive at a separate terminal on the other side of the runway, as I think the sight of 100 Iranians (plus moi, as the sole gringo) may be too much of an excitement for the regular pax and lead to tears before bedtime. Even the immigration guy who admitted me didn’t quite believe that I had actually arrived with this motley gang, many of whom would have done v well in a lookalike competition for Long John Silver – they have a piratanical look about them.

Goldfish are v much part of the Iranian New Year, which in case you have forgotten, is about to be celebrated – (year 1380 for those of you who like statistics). They are bought and exchanged and generally given a short life, mainly I should think due to lack of 02, in the N Y period, along with small pots of sprouting grass seeds. All supposed to remind you of new beginnings in life (though in the case of the goldfish, there are new endings coming too…) There is a p.r campaign afoot to have people release them in ponds, once they have had enuf of being reminded of new life and basically want to sink back into their old ways. This may be good news for goldfish.

Iran was abuzz with New Year festivities (well it’s about as festive as you can get on a diet of gallons of tea), which means firecrackers at night, some of the severe detonation type and two nights ago there was much ado with fires which people were leaping across in order to purify themselves.  It’s one of the rituals.

The way from the airport is also frequently blocked by masses of cars going out to welcome returnees from the Haj. This is the most important thing to happen in many people’s lives and therefore has to be recognized by everyone they know deciding to go to the airport to welcome them home. It’s total chaos. I had seen cars with much bilious green bunting and had thought it some wedding sorta thing but discovered that of course it is the green of Islam, so we all piles into the car, from toothless grandma down to the youngest infant, plus HUGE bunches of flowers and head for the airport. There was an Iran Air 747 coming in, which shall we say can seat plus/minus 350, so if you multiply that by probably 10 people coming to meet you, all armed with bunches of flowers, then you can begin only faintly to imagine the scene. Fortunately, there is always a separate Haj terminal, so this ordeal does not have to impinge on the usual sober and dull side the airport activity. But of course Idda loved to go see it all first hand.

In fact, Iran is just a whole mass of sober and dull stuff. No one looks like they are having an even halfway good time. And it doesn’t really look like they miss it too much. We must look a complete gang of libertines. Only concession to our lifestyle is with the guys, all of whom are much into sticky and powerful colognes, applied liberally. When it comes time for the ritual male/male 3 kiss goodbye, if you get hugged by many in succession, then you take on an aroma totally unique….

One little ps. This was the second time I had met flying goldfish. Flying from Calcutta to Dhaka, many years before, with my good friend Carolyn, a young Indian girl boarded the aircraft with a small but real fish tank with many confused occupants. The only trouble was in mid-flight, where it was lodged on the floor at her feet, she managed to knock it over. All of us around were looking under our seats for leaping fish and the cabin crew came with pots of water from the galley to refill the tank. Who says flying is boring ?

This is already too long …more to come.