Open Writing

Recently, my wife and I took a two week cruise on the Rhine, traveling from Antwerp in Belgium to Basle in Switzerland. It was a belated honeymoon, twenty one years late, combined with a wedding anniversary celebration that had been canceled in June this year due to illness. The trip was also a nostalgic return to scenes and places each of us had experienced separately, in my case as an army draftee in the ‘50’s; and for my wife, a visit to places she’d last seen as a teacher in Germany in the “60’s.

The cruise was all that we had looked forward to; quaint towns soaked in history, majestic hills with the hatched patterns of the vineyards, good beer, and of course, castle upon castle upon castle, all set against the swirling currents of the storied river. But though the cruise was truly a dream come true, getting to and from Europe was more like a nightmare.

In the course of my business career I traveled extensively, both in the US and worldwide, and this gave me the opportunity to rank the airlines that carried me. It wasn’t hard, because the difference between the good ones and the others was so marked. The top of my list was British Air, with the flagship airlines of Singapore, Korea and Germany coming close behind.

Among the worst at that time, by my ranking, was Sabena, Air India, KLM and US Air. My evaluation method wasn’t in the least scientific. It simply reflected my subjective reaction to how I was treated. Punctuality, food and service quality and seat comfort came high on the list. I’m over 6 feet tall and weigh around 240lbs on a good day, so leg-room and seat width were very important, particularly when some of my flights lasted 18 hours or more.

Our flights this time took us from JFK in New York to London Heathrow and on to Brussels, returning from Basle to JFK, again through Heathrow. The carrier was my old friend and standard-setter, British Air, so I had no apprehensions about the experience, but I was soon to be disillusioned. The first hint that things had changed came as we boarded the plane at JFK. Without any announcement that we heard, the crowd of passengers surged towards the door to the jet way. No attempt was made to board by rows, so the chaos that ensued on a fully booked Boeing 747 isn’t hard to imagine.

Once on board, my fond memories of the airline rapidly disintegrated. True to the English love of class distinctions, the old Business, Coach and First Class sections had been supplanted by Economy, Premium Economy, Business/Club and First. There were also some other arcane distinctions of seating that I could not decipher. The best class we could aspire to was plain Economy, and as far as I could determine, Premium Economy simply offered a larger seat; no small consideration, but when I asked a flight attendant to explain the difference he tartly replied “400 pounds extra, one way.”

At the time this seemed outrageously expensive for a couple of additional inches in the width and leg-room, but by the time we arrived at Heathrow I would gladly have paid double that amount. The seats and spacing in Economy were clearly designed for children or elves, but certainly not for the average human adult. If someone other than my wife had been sitting next to me, my upper body overlap would have presented an embarrassing problem. Sleep was impossible, and getting food from the retractable seat-arm tray into one’s mouth without spilling most of it was a real challenge.

The food service surprisingly wasn’t half bad, and “complementary” drinks was a welcome touch, spoiled only by the response of the flight attendant when I asked for two gin and tonics. “I hope you’re not going to get drunk,” he said disapprovingly. “You know these miniatures are doubles,” he added. “Well, doubles they may be in an English pub,” I replied, “but no self respecting American bar tender would agree.” With an ill disguised sniff he moved on to the next seat.

Leaving out the rest of the miserable details, suffice it to say that the only positive factor was a strong tail-wind that reduced our outward bound trip to a blessed five and a half hours. Once aboard our cruise-boat the unpleasant memory rapidly faded, and not until we were close to the end of our vacation did we contemplate the agony of the potentially 7 plus hours return flight. By then we thought we knew what we had to deal with, but British Air still had a few surprises up its tattered sleeve. Principle among these was that we discovered on our arrival at JFK that our baggage, and that of fifty other passengers, had been left behind at Heathrow! As of this writing, three days after our arrival, we still don’t know when or if we’ll get it back.

Postscript

In a curious coincidence, on the day I started to write this column, an article titled “Welcome to London: Your baggage is Missing,” was published in the Wall Street Journal. Author Scott McCartney describes what apparently everyone but my wife and I already knew. This is an excerpt from his piece.

“British Airways has been a baggage nightmare for travelers since Christmas last year. Tens of thousands of bags have piled up at Heathrow at various times this summer. British Airways, the world's second-largest airline in international passenger traffic, mishandled 28 bags per 1,000 passengers in the second quarter this year, a rate that is twice as bad as the worst U.S. major airline, US Airways Group Inc. In all, British Airways has lost the bags of more than 550,000 customers in the first half of this year. The airline says it is sorry about such customer experiences and that its baggage operation is returning to "normal" now, but at Heathrow it is still susceptible to meltdowns when flights are delayed.” Yea verily.

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