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airbus

Beware Of Row 29 Seat F!

November 10, 2009

in Baby & Kid Stories

After completing a wonderful, action filled, 15 day adventure to Croatia & Montenegro, my Mother and I flew from Zagreb to Frankfurt, Germany with a 3 hour layover, and then flew Lufthansa flight #444 from Frankfurt to Atlanta, GA. Our Vantage Tour guide, Tomislav, had taken very good care of us and after living in Germany for three years and flying Lufthansa many times, I was looking forward to a 10 hour flight of solitude and rest. Mom paid extra for business class, but that was fine since I just wanted to sleep and watch a movie or two.

The tour had been paid for a year in advance so I questioned why I was not assigned a seat for the first leg of the journey. I ended up with a window seat and had a good flight. As soon as we arrived in Frankfurt, we rushed to our departure gate for our next flight and waited quite awhile for the attendants to open the gate to get a seat assignment. Of course I asked for a window or aisle seat, but none were available. The attendant gave me row29 seat F. Little did I know that this would be the row from Hell! Ten very long hours of ear-ringing, trampled-on, stinky-smells, torture, and confinement. To the right of me in seat 29G, sat a woman holding her 14 month old “lap child,” to the left of me in seat 29D was another mother holding her 6 month old “lap child” with a child about four or five in seat 29C, next to her. Visualize this – four seats with three adults and three children. Shouldn’t this be illegal FAA?

Before the plane took off, baby on the left starts screaming which makes baby on the right cry. Immediately I flag down a steward and ask for a seat change. She would have to check to see if there are any available seats. Hatches were latched and all seat belts had been fastened. Again, almost yelling above the wailing and crying, I ask to be moved. “Sorry- the plane is full!”

Once we took off and leveled off the steward approached! Yeah!! There must be a seat after all!! Instead, she pulled out a baby bassinet and attached it to the wall directly in front of us for baby on my right. Then on the left side, another steward pulled out a second baby bassinet and attached it also onto the wall directly in front of our row, trapping me in for the longest flight of my life. Both mothers put their babies in the bassinet and the choir began. In STEREO!!

Baby on the left did pretty well throughout most of the flight, but toddler on the right used the bassinet for her very own trampoline and playground, jumping up and down and using me as her monkey bars. I wasn’t able to raise my viewing screen which is attached to the chair because of the bassinet and all the crap that mother on the right had out for the toddler which also made it impossible to pull the tray up from the arm rest to place a tray on at meal time.

Both mothers had other family members on the flight with them, so mom on the right would leave toddler napping to go visit family in the section in front – out of sight. Toddler had a built in GPS system and would wake up two minutes after mom left crying loudly. I had to tell the steward to go fetch the wayward mom at least twice.

I blame Lufthansa for placing a non-family member on row 29, especially when there ARE other family members that can sit with the mothers and baby(ies). And I blame Vantage for not taking care of their people to the END of the journey by guarantying preassigned seats on the flights.

Beware of row 29 on an Airbus A340-300!! Lufthansa does NOT have the “fine standard of service” that it once had. The 20% savings certificate received is not acceptable and a joke for the experience that I had to incurred on that 10 hour flight from HELL!

I have a suggestion for airline companies that will guarantee a bump in sales. Offer a no-child seating section for adults only. If this appears too politically incorrect, then simply offer a “family” section where you isolate the kids and parents from the adults-only section. That way, those who have kids (along with their messy stinky diapers and screams) can enjoy the company of other families and their kids (along with their messy stinky diapers and screams). The rest of us can then enjoy a child-free, cry-free trip.

Suzan

Tagged as: airbus, children & babies, flight attendant, lufthansa

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Three Short “Flesh Spilling Over” Stories

October 17, 2009

in Portly Stories

(#1) On an airbus from Dallas to Los Angeles (after flying to Dallas from London) I was seated one seat from the aisle. The man who sat down next to me was not only giant, buy very hairy and he smelled funny, like body odor and old food. He physically spilled over onto my seat and I practically had to sit in my other neighbor’s lap to not be touched by the hairy behemoth. He proceeded to eat snacks the entire flight and he chewed with his mouth open. It was the most foul experience I’ve ever had on an airline.

(#2) I was on a short flight from NYC to Tampa. The flight was cramped. I boarded the place late so when I went to my seat there was an obese lady sitting in the aisle seat. I had the window seat on a two seat row. She had raised the armrests so that part of her body was leaning against mine. She was sweaty and I could feel her body temperature throughout the entire flight. I was so happy when I got off the plane. I know now that if that happens to me again I would lower the armrest.

(#3) Short and not so sweet. I was on the way from Atlanta to Pensacola and a very large woman had the seat next to me. Her body was literally flowing onto me. Her very tall, thin son had the seat opposite with no one beside him. She was very nice and wanted to talk, which I did but I was totally grossed out by having her fat rolling over me. I should have just changed seats but I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. It was weird. It was like she didn’t know that her fat was taking up half of my seat. Thank heavens it was only an hour flight.

Tagged as: airbus, odor, portly

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Escape From A War Zone

September 23, 2009

in Odds & Ends Stories

This story never really made it to “Flight from Hell” status, but it contained all the stress levels of my worst trips ever and could have easily slid to a hellish trip at any point. I would say it was more of a “Flight from a slightly unsettling place,” but interesting none the less.

My business takes me all over Africa, and although my area of responsibility is fairly mundane being IT infrastructure and services, I occasionally have to travel into some slightly interesting places.

One trip took me to two of our locations in Madagascar which is normally a beautiful, interesting and completely safe place. The early part of 2009 was, however, a time of political turmoil, violence and chaos in some parts of the country as there were months of protests and rioting by opposition supporters followed by a coup and more protests and rioting from the supporters of the ousted President.

My trip had been delayed a few times due to the unrest, but finally we were able to schedule it as our local staff informed us that things had settled down and that there shouldn’t be any major problems. So the adventure began…

Initially I was supposed to travel from South Africa to the Capital, Antananarivo, spend a day there at our office and then visit a facility in the south of the country for a few days before travelling back to South Africa via Antananarivo again.

The first half of the trip went very, very well. No travel problems, the capital was quiet with no protests and I made it to our southern facility without incident. Things got a little more interesting when it was time for me to leave. Things had heated up again in the capital with roadblocks popping up, and while there had been no violence against foreigners, I make it a practice to avoid war zones whenever possible. The uptick in violence had caused a rush of people leaving the country, so my best option of leaving directly from my location in the south was impossible due to the charter flights all being full.

At this point things began to be interesting. I had called our travel agents to see what options I had when I was informed that they had for some reason not confirmed my return flights properly and I didn’t have a ticket on the flight back. Being a fairly experienced traveller in Africa, I got around this by arriving at the airport well before the flight and just talking my way onto the flight. (Things are a little fast and loose in some areas of Africa and there were no automated systems to tell them I didn’t have a ticket and I had a convincing looking printout from the travel agent.)

So I arrived at the airport in Antananarivo with many hours before my onward flight home. Trying to get to the bottom of what has happened with our travel agents, I call back and am told that I don’t have a ticket, they can’t help me, and after several calls, 2 levels of managers and some stunned silence the answer was basically “let us know how it turns out.”

Taking stock of my situation and noticing that there are starting to be a lot of jeeps with soldiers zooming around outside and the BBC news stating that protests in the city have turned violent, I decide that I needed to get out of there.

Problem #1 is that my original flight I thought I had a ticket for is completely full due to people leaving in droves.

Problem #2 is that I did not have any credit cards that would work in Madagascar on me as they are largely useless and I am always worried about them being stolen, so I often leave them at home and take just my ATM card and cash I need for hotels and meals. While this works well for general expenditures, it is less useful for needing large amounts of cash right away to buy a new plane ticket.

The stress level at the airport was starting to get a bit high as things were getting more interesting outside. I can’t say I ever felt unsafe but some of the police officers were starting to get pretty tense.

Checking the various schedules I see that there is one more flight out of the country the same day. A flight to Mauritius. I find a staff member and they inform me that there are plenty of seats as due to the lack of tourism to Madagascar there are only about 20 people on the airbus 340. I manage to find the office of the airline manager, lay out my situation, let him know the travel agency will be taking care of any ticket costs, and when that doesn’t work at first, I make myself annoying and persistent enough that he will want to get rid of me by helping. After an amusing mix of pleading, begging, cajoling, threatening, bullying and charming, to my complete surprise he lets me onto the plane without any kind of paid ticket!

Once the plane left the ground my stress level dropped way down and we were whisked out of the country to the warm, sunny and loving arms of the resort island of Mauritius. I made it home the next day easily but had to endure a horrible overnight layover in Mauritius. Did I mention the closest hotel to the airport is a beach resort? To take my mind off the tough day I had previously, I did a bit of snorkelling in the morning before my flight. I did get one doozy of a sunburn which made the return flight a bit sore… tough life.

A couple of points:

1. We have corporate travel agents we pay a lot of money to and they are supposed to sort out these sorts of problems. So while I am generally fairly self sufficient while travelling, this was a case where I really needed them to solve the problem that they caused by screwing up my ticket.

2. I learned a number of lessons on this trip. I arrange all my own travel now, I always ensure I have the resources to buy an emergency ticket, and if we need to go to areas with unrest again I will send my intern. :) (Just kidding on the last one… I think.)

3. This had a few dicey moments and some stress, but overall nothing overly horrible happened to me. The same day I was trying to leave the country people died in violence between the police/army and protesters. If we ever needed a sobering reminder about where our travel inconveniences fit in to the grand scheme of things this was it.

AfricaNomad

Tagged as: airbus, violence

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Barfzilla

June 27, 2009

in Portly Stories

A few months ago I was flying back from Heathrow to Minneapolis/Saint Paul. My seat was in the last row of an Airbus A310. My experience in the U.K was great. I suppose all good things come to an end.

Barfzilla appeared and took the last seat – the middle seat in the row. My first thought as I looked up and saw her was ‘Holy Sh*t, she’s huge!!’ No kidding folks, she was about 5’6” and must have weighed between 400-450 pounds. She was sweating profusely and reeked of booze. All the indications for a nightmare flight were in place.

She squeezed into the middle seat, a good bit of her over flowing onto me and the chap sitting on the aisle seat. She lifted the arm rests up and they disappeared behind her arms. A flight attendant came by and gave her a seat belt extender. With a look of compassion, the attendant shook her head as the HUGE woman attempted to buckle her seat belt. After what seemed to an eternity, she finally managed to lock the clasp. The belt with extender was digging into her gut mass – I estimate at least 10-12 inches.

Crammed against the window, I began to nod off as the plane taxied to the runway. A short time later after take-off I was awakened by the massive woman’s left arm flailing about, her arm blubber hit me on the head. That was it, I was getting pissed off. She was yelling and bellowing, trying to get out of her seat. Without warning, she began to barf. The first stream hit the passengers in the row in front of me – all kinds of yelling and cursing began from the barfed on passengers. She continued to barf – all over herself, splashing barf on the poor chap in the aisle seat.

Enough was enough; I stood up in my seat and vaulted to the aisle. By then the cabin steward was in the back trying to find out what all the commotion was. Barfzilla continued to puke, in the aisle, on my seat, on the now empty seats in front of her. I once saw a Monty Python movie that had a huge guy at a restaurant projectile vomiting. This was uncannily similar.

The flight attendants tried to get the woman up and into the bathroom. She would not fit into the rear bath room so they covered her with a blanket and led her up front. The stench was unbelievable!

I spent most of my time on the flight in a flight attendants jump seat. Even they were shocked by the amount of barf she spewed. She wasn’t sick, she was drunk.

It’s a good thing they hustled her off the plane when we landed, there were 4 people who had been puked on, they were in a nasty and quite possibly violent mood.

Tagged as: airbus, alcohol, flight attendant, lavatory, odor, portly, seats, vomit

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Purgatory Is A USAir Flight

May 17, 2009 Delay Stories

On Friday, March 27 our party of four was scheduled to depart Orlando (MCO) traveling to Philadelphia (PHL) on USAIR # 706. We arrived in plenty of time to make the flight. The check-in process was smooth and we had no problems getting to the gate. It looked like it would be a good day [...]

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Airplane Restaurant

March 22, 2009 Flying Hell Blog

How many times have you wished that you could board a plane without security hassles, or without the worries of missing your flight or the plane having to land on the Hudson River? And how many times have you desired a decent meal on a flight? In Taipei, Taiwan you can have all of the [...]

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