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We discussed which airlines would like to see back and how about if we discuss which airline flight we would remember as best and which one as worst. You can include anything you want - bad pax seating next to you, screaming kids, long delays etc.I feel among us there should be a wealth of good and bad experience.

Best for aircrew competence and aircraft maintenance: Ryanair
Worst for treating passengers like cattle: Ryanair

So you pays your minimal money, travel in discomfort but arrive safely and on time. Your choice !

I think that's probably fair comment although I would never travel with them again to find out.

Best for creating a fantastic hyped up illusion of glamour and excellence: Virgin Atlantic.
Worst at delivering what they promise: Virgin Atlantic.

The best: Flying with Air Austral, because it means I'm going to Reunion.

The worst: BUA Brittania, trooping charter Stanstead to Nicosia. My wife's 1st flight, it immediately killed off all of her Hollywood inspired images of the glamour of 'the Jet Set'!

Edited to one I'd forgotten. Zim Air, Joburg - Vic Falls in an antique B-707. Everything rattled.

Best for treating SLF, apart from admin, Emirates. Best for mistreating crew - Emirates. Our choice every time JNB-DXB-ATH but have to knock on the flight deck door just before landing to ensure that Biggles is not too fatigued to plant the jet in one piece.

Mistreating crew = recipe for disaster. Just one of the reasons I won't travel on Scummirats.

jetstar from perth to singapore.
most uncomfortable and tightly crammed seating I have ever experienced.
6 hour flight and over 4 hours of it in agony.
trying to move in the seat caused a muscle or tendon tear.
I get surgery to sort out the hernia next month.
never ever again will I fly jetstar.

My best Business Class experience was with BA flying ATH -LHR just after the 2004 Olympic games. I was surrounded by members of the BBC crew who had been covering the games. I was plied with copious amounts of bubbly and the crew kept on swapping places so they all got to chat with me. I staggered off the aeroplane and poured myself into the RAF Club. ........

Best Airline? SEAir. Let 410, the Captain allowed me to rest my telelens on his shoulder during landing at a dirt strip (at the time) on Coron Island. I've had numerous trips with them, all good ones.
Best airline experience? Being upgraded from business to first on AF, LAX to CDG. Even allowed to smoke since I was only pax in first.
Worst? Amongst many "interesting" flights in China in the nineties on a mixture of "interesting" aircrafts (Tu154, Yaks, Packed BaE146 in winter) I will rate a flight on a Xinjiang Il86, PEK to Urumqi highly. I never thought the thing would reach cruising altitude. Lots of novel solutions on that one.
Per

Used to fly to US East Coast regularly from Sydney. As all flights were classified as a business got to fly business class. But at the time United didn't have a business class across the US. Ticket said business class and they couldn't downgrade us, so... we always got upgraded to first. This was in the eighties when first class meant first class. Used to quite look forward my quarterly trips to Boston. LA to Boston first class was an experience worth having.

Alison

Ancient Mariner wrote: Lots of novel solutions on that one.

I trust that this didn't include offloading the Pax, sometime between take off & landing!

ian16th wrote:

Ancient Mariner wrote: Lots of novel solutions on that one.

I trust that this didn't include offloading the Pax, sometime between take off & landing!

Nope, but I bet it would have been feasible as entering the 'plane was through a hatch in the belly, then you arrived in the "luggage locker" where you stowed your stuff before climbing a flight of stairs to the main deck. Every seat had an individual fan in the seat back in front which you could switch on/off as you pleased. Just like on their flight decks.
Don't even get me started on the pax operated manual "emergency slide" on a domestic Chinese Tu154. Had me laughing until I saw the port engine hanging at an angle not men to be.
Per

Best - carrying my folks MEL-ADL aboard VH-TBJ after I was checked out as F/O. Mum, who was always supportive in my flying endeavor, sat up the front from TOD to landing.



Worst - cleared to the line on the 320 (thought it'd be just a 2 year stint...)

Oh Slash! Such nostalgia!! !! What a great aircraft in that livery!

Worst? Overnight PER - OOL Jetstar....it was paid for by work....won't be doing that again!

Best? Probably LAX - JFK, QF Business class, several Business class trips between HKG & LGW, CX (Old 'Marco Polo' Business class), refuelling through BAH...(yeah, a long time ago)

Recent best? Probably on FINNAIRS new A350, HEL - HKG....very comfortable A/C....(for Y class anyway!)

Try Another Airline did have good livery.

Found Perth to Melbourne painful as it was the end of a long journey (Heathrow to Melb)
so always seemed to drag, especially in the old 78 - 82 747's in use at the time.

Best, A380 Mel - LAX

The worst flight was being in steerage on a completely full night flight from Lagos to Amsterdam with KLM, after a short-lived job in Nigeria. The flight and crew were fine, but the seat next to me as well as a sizeable part of mine, was occupied by a Nigerian who farted all through the flight. I was just so glad to be getting out of the country I would gladly have stood all the way home.

The best was from Fort Worth to Gatwick after a course at the Bell Helicopters factory in Fort Worth. The flight was almost empty and we were looked after brilliantly by a couple of charming hostesses and given whatever was available from first class by way of food and drink. It helped that we were with BCal Helicopters and it was a BCal flight!

We're biased, FD2, but I agree that BCAL flights were the best. I was so impressed I married one of the hosties back in the 70's. I used to fly business class with them quite often in the early 80's when I was to and froing to Dallas to do the factory courses and later on the 214ST deliveries to the east coast and also to Houston for the S76 delivery from Houston Conroe to New York.

On the latter one, we had been misled and the S76 wasn't nearly ready so we had to turn round and go back to the UK. There were no BCAL flights so the Station Manager arranged for us to fly back to LGW gratis as positioning crew with PanAm. As he had said we were both BCAL Captains, conveniently leaving out the helicopter bit, we went First Class - it was just superb and my only time in First Class.

Ah PanAm!

Never had the privilege of travelling right up the front, but a grateful employer did pay for business class.

Only did one intercontinental leg with them, MIA - LHR, but I still have the menu! Not only the one for that leg, but in the seatback in front there was one from a previous leg.

I have the menu's, framed on my 'study' wall.

On the subject of flying first class. Through much of the eighties I used to fly from Sydney to the East Coast of the US - Boston, Mass regularly. The company had authorised all management flights over a certain length to fly business class. Whilst United did business class across the water, there was nothing similar from the West Coast to the East in the US. So we were automatically upgraded to first. Must have flown LA/SF to Boston first class as often as eight times a year for many years. Got to meet some very interesting people.

Alison

I used to get First Class on BA, thanks to PaWoody’s staff priority, anyone else remember the lounge in the bubble on the 747 Classic