It was better before...

So this is a real story about my best bud airline (large one, you guess who). We have been together since the 80's when I picked an airline that partnered with SAS to make sure we had links back to the mother ship Sweden. It's been a ton of miles and I still have that proud email they sent when I reach my 1,000,000 mile bar (note to self, push the MySQL fulfillment project forward quickly).

Well, time has passed on and my friend is showing a lot of aging, and much is not pretty...

Today, in fact right now, Im onboard a flight from Washington DC to Germany for our developer conference.

It all starts with a great idea. They have added a 'red carpet' boarding lane for frequent fliers like me. So, if you're a 1k or Global services or ponied up Euros or upgrades for Bus or First class, you can stroll into the separate boarding lane at any time with a nice red carpet and get that envy look from fellow coach fliers and not worry about the long lines to bard. So thats a great start but thats when all the good stuff ends.

After finding my 15 years aged 777 seat that likely has never seen any real maintenance team, I plug in the 50 cent headset (which is free!) to get some ear comfort while the rest of the coach crowd gets settled in. The music is of course not yet on so thats not helping much. Ok, so take-off and it's time for free movies shortly after takeoff. Well, almost since the headset ain't working. After chatting with my fellow passenger next seat to right, we have come to the unnerving thought that it might just be worse than a headset since hers aint working either. At this point, one finds the Level 1 button (attendant icon) though after pressing it and waiting for quite some time, I realize that it is more of a feature request that might get implemented some day or just an inconvenience for the air attendants since Im still breathing and don't require immediate medical attention. Since no one is showing up, I grab the first uniformed person that tries to pass me and with a services guys smile conveys my message and the request for new headsets. It make no difference. Partial noise on right muff but comes and goes which is worse than just silence. Now, one would expect a "we are really sorry for the inconvenience" and the attendant writing up a service report so that next fliers won't have the same great fun of watching silent movies on a 4" screen. None of that happened likely though I can't confirm...

So dinner time. After 20 years plus of flying, Ive gotten used to coach class culinary levels so no real surprises there. You can pick any of the two dishes, it don't matter, they taste the same and they are totally benign.

So with no movie to watch and at least 3 hours of no laptop battery, I decide to have a bottle of wine (thats a plastic cup size...). Now, it aint free so remember that. One wonder if anyone should really pay for such a drink at any time. So, what could go wrong here? Well, they wanted $5 for it and wasn't happy when I told them that my pretty 1k coupons was above in the overhead bin and I would have to settle my account after dinner. We had already eaten the food when they come by to offer drinks (batch processing) so it's more of an after dinner drink. Just one partial problem, the bottle was 1/3 frozen. They do freeze from the top so the cap is frozen as well and hence no wine to be had. I gave up on the idea of smashing the bottle against the window quickly, it's rather cold out there so I ring the call button again, expecting someone to come by and ask how they can help. Aint happening for quite some time, so I grab the attendant when she flies by again, this time with a cart, and points to the partially frozen beverage. She tells me she will get a new one for me right away. Ain't happening...Nobody is showing up.
My call button still glows in the dark and my normally calm disposition is getting a tad scratched. So some time goes by and they come by asking if we would like anything else to drink which is a great gesture. I point out the previously frozen bottle, it has actually thawed now so my evidence is gone...but they swap em for me without comment.

While Im sipping my wine another flight attendant comes by asking me about my glowing light, I tell her thats its been taken care of. Now, it's rather dark in the cabin at this point and a different flight attendant is sweeping the tables as fast as she can, including my half drunken mini bottle...before she manage to escape with my hard fought for bad tasting wine, I grab her and claim what is mine. She actually apologized...

Later, I grabbed my 1k coupons and went down the cabin to intrude in their dinner (they sneak down 1st class meals) and settle my account. They said thanks....and they did smile back.

What happened to my friend? did the 30% pay cut and cutting of benefits really have such hard impact, I know I would have been ticked off. Or is it just natural, like Detroit, to fall behind and not doing anything about it? Take a trip to Asia...fly Singapore airlines or any other large Asian airline and guess what, it's a different world.

Like our parents always said, it was better before...

ulf