Poll: Have you ever passed up the cheapest airfare to avoid a bad airline?

by Aaron Hotfelder on

People love to complain about the dismal state of air travel these days. Whether it’s the stomach-churning airline food (and there’s so little of it!), the complete lack of leg room, or the fact that your luggage was for some reason routed through Honolulu, we’ve come to expect some pretty poor service from quite a few airlines these days.

In any other industry, customers register their indignation by refusing to spend money at the offending establishment. Found a finger in your Caesar’s Salad? You’re probably never visiting that restaurant again. Tired of your cable cutting out in the middle of House? You just might cancel that company’s service and call up their competitor (who’ll probably even throw in a year of Starz at no extra charge!)

But with airlines, we’re like the pathetic girlfriend who’s been cheated on five times but still believes her boyfriend when he says, “Seriously, this time will be different! I’ve changed!” The worst airlines stay in business because by and large people are willing to put up with crummy service if it means they get a cheap flight.

I mean, imagine you’ve just done a search on Kayak for a flight from San Diego to Boston departing on November 4 and returning on the 15th. The lowest fare shows up as $228, but it’s with an airline that’s burned you in the past. (Let’s call them Cut-Rate Airlines.) This is an airline that’s arrived to its destination late almost half the time you’ve flown with them. They’ve lost your bags twice, and both times they shipped them to you two days later. Their food stinks and the flight attendants have never been especially pleasant either.

Fortunately, there’s an almost identical flight aboard Pleasant Air, a carrier you’ve flown with a dozen times without any problems. But that flight costs $288, sixty dollars more than the flight on Cut-Rate. So what do you do?

I’m interested in this question because as much as people love to complain about airlines, especially those incompetent bastards at [insert bad airline here], I usually find that people prefer the lowest airfare to paying more to fly with an airline with better service.

So, Gadling readers, am I wrong? Can airlines continue to treat their passengers like crap as long as they offer low fares? Make your voice heard in the poll below– or in the Comments.

Inside the Emirates A380 First Class shower

by Scott Carmichael on

Last week, I wrote how smelly passengers are among the most annoying people to be sitting next to on a flight. For passengers in First Class on Emirates flights serviced by their Airbus A380, body odor can be a thing of the past (and I don’t mean though copious amounts of Drakar Noir).

The Emirates Airbus A380 is the first commercial plane in the world to feature full shower facilities. Passengers in First Class can request the use of the shower, and are allotted 30 minutes of privacy, along with 5 minutes of water.

The shower facility is massive when compared to most bathrooms in the skies, and the room is thoroughly cleaned between each visit. In fact, this flying shower has more features than most of us have at home, including a flat panel TV and several integrated closets and hangers.

This photo was taken inside the shower cubicle. You can clearly see the water timer to the left of the shower head, which should help prevent you from a nasty surprise when your 5 minutes are up.

A beautifully arranged sink area with a marble counter top and a real faucet, unlike the crappy faucets us commoners get on most flights. Other amenities include a hair dryer and of course various toiletries.

I’m not an aviation specialist, but I can imagine the design hassles involved in carrying enough water for all these showers are immense. Still, when you are paying upwards of $4000 for the pleasure, a little luxury goes a long way.

Many thanks to Flyertalk member Flyingfox for granting us permission to use his fantastic photos.

Mile High Dining Club: Air France

by Kendra Bailey Morris on


Welcome to the first installment of the Mile High Dining Club where I’ll be exploring and reviewing all things delicious (and perhaps not so) in the air, on the tracks, and on the ground.

As airlines continue to cut more services, the bygone Pan American days of bottomless champagne, caviar and carving stations of roast beef have unfortunately fallen to the wayside as more travelers now find themselves packing cold cheese pizza, cinna-buns and bagel sandwiches into their carry-on’s in an attempt to avoid spending more money while on board. Some food experts even argue that “complimentary” first and business class meals no longer offer anything edible of note other than, “the dreadful food in the sky”. Certainly, the culinary times are-a-changin’ due to economic woes, so is it still possible to enjoy a decent meal while in the air?

Let’s take a look at one of the more respected airlines for foodies– Air France.

It’s well known that the French have it going on when it comes to cooking, and my experience while dining on-board an Air France flight mostly held its ground to this effect. Recently, I booked an overnight flight from Washington to Paris in the airline’s Affaires (business class) cabin where the uber-spacious seats convert to semi-flat beds and little extra’s such as mini Clarins moisturizers, feather pillows, and drawstring bags for your shoes, make red-eye travel a lot less painful.

Dinner started off with an aperitif of salted cashews and a glass of Ayala Brut Majeur champagne, which like all of Air France’s wine selections, was chosen by sommelier, Olivier Poussier. After being presented with the Affaires in-flight menu, which typically offers a four-course option including an hors d’oeuvre, main course, cheese course and dessert, I moved on to a glass of white Bordeaux (Chalonnais Rully Rodet, 2006). Note: Air France’s economy class also offers aperitif, Champagne, and Olivier Poussier chosen wines along with a choice of two hot meals as part of their on-board service.
First course was a classic cold duck foie gras accented with onion compote and served over butter lettuce. Simple, yet delicious. A nice addition were the mini bottles of extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic for drizzling, yet the accompanying baguette was disappointing. Hard, crumbly and dry, even smothering it in French butter couldn’t save it. After sampling some seriously tasty, crusty baguettes while jaunting throughout France, I’ve just got to call out a French airline for serving crappy bread. Non bon, people.

Second course was a platter of beef tenderloin in a mushroom cream sauce served with broccoletti and mashed potatoes. While the meat appeared properly cooked on the outside (nice grill marks) the inside was substantially undercooked. Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m a rare meat girl all the way down to the moo, and filet mignon is designed to be served rare to medium-rare, but this slab of beef was about as raw as it gets. Too bad I couldn’t send it back to the chef for a few more minutes on the grill, but the fact is, airlines don’t have a lot to work with, especially when you consider that many meals travel up to twenty-two hours from kitchen to plane. With this in mind, the broccoletti was outstanding–al dente and crisp, as if it had just come out of a pot of boiling water, so kudos for that success.

Cheese consisted of perfectly sweaty, room temperature Fourme d’Ambert, Cabecou and Camembert along with a few pieces of fruit, and was an excellent match for the 2005 Jean Guyon Cru Bourgeois Superieur. Dessert held its own as a raspberry mille-feuille, although it tasted ever-so-slightly freezer burned.

In all fairness, I have to add that reviewing an airline’s in-flight dining cannot be held to the same standards to that of a restaurant. For starters, airline food is often cooked, chilled and then reheated on the plane versus being prepared a la minute, and you probably won’t be seeing any celeb chefs plating up their specialties along with the flight attendants. The fact is, airlines have many things working against them when it comes to preparation, yet luckily it isn’t all bad as many airlines are changing their culinary tune when it comes to pleasing their passenger’s palates.

Sure, the meal I had on board Air France wasn’t Chez Panisse nor was it trying to be. However, for an in-flight dining experience (cue endless pours of amazing French wine) Air France was pretty darn tasty, and I’d be happy to eat and drink my way across the Atlantic with them anytime.

–Kendra

Onboard Central America’s thriftiest carrier: Sosa

by Grant Martin on

Honduras has two carriers that fly among San Pedro Sula, La Ceiba, and the Bay Islands. Those are Islena Regional (a division of TACA) and Aerolineas Sosa, “Su linea Aerea Amiga” (Your Airline Friend!)

Among other aircraft, TACA operates a few ATR-42s on these routes, a 42 seat propeller plane manufactured in France. Islena Regional, on the other hand, uses a fleet of sad, dumpier versions of that aircraft known as the Czech made Let-L410 Turbolet.

Gadling had the pleasure of flying on both airlines last month, but the most exciting, scary, beautiful and terrible experience was on Sosa. Follow along as we take you on a virtual voyage on Aerolineas Sosa, Central America’s thriftiest carrier.

Planning and booking tickets is one of the key components to arranging any holiday travel. Most airlines use a website to help convey timetables and book tickets, but Sosa doesn’t believe in that, nor do they believe in any contact phone number to help garner information. Instead, travelers are suggested to purchase tickets at the airport, although the ticket counter at La Cieba isn’t open all of the time – just a couple of hours before the flights. That aren’t published.

Fortunately, timetables are posted at some hotels and hostels across the Bay Islands, and using this information, we were able to snag a couple of seats on an early morning flight between Roatan and La Cieba.

Checking in at the counter, we were given two laminated boarding passes with numbers on them that could have been made by drunk grade schoolers, then ushered towards a security checkpoint into a small waiting room that seated only 100 people or so. Luckily, it was only a few minutes before an airline agent in a yellow vest wandered up to the sliding glass doors at the end of the room, opened them up and waved everyone out towards the plane, taking our boarding passes in the process.

Walking out onto the hot, Central American tarmac, the gaggle of 40 passengers wound out to the Turbolet, where the captain was standing outside, reading a newspaper on the wheel well. He waved. Everyone boarded through the rear door behind the passenger cabin, and those of us with bags tossed them into a pile on the back two seats.

Picking through the narrow aisle, I found a seat at the front of the aircraft, right behind the captain, in fact. Someone had used a label maker to stick 1A to the ceiling above my head, so I guess I was in the bulkhead. The best part, however, was that I could stretch my legs out — right into the cockpit. I could have kicked the pilot in the stomach if I wanted to.

Shortly after boarding, the pilot folded up his newspaper and ambled up to the front left seat. Cracking the window open for air, he fired up both engines, we taxied over to the only runway and lifted off into the humid, Honduran airspace, gently banking over the hills of Roatan and making our way over the Caribbean Sea towards La Cieba. Departure accomplished, he opened his newspaper back up and let the co-pilot take control.

Looking closer at the cockpit, one could put together the history of the aircraft. Half of the controls were labeled in Russian and some weren’t labeled at all. Many of the gauges didn’t work. The same was true for most of the overhead vents, many of which were broken off and not streaming air, and the rest of which were just permanently off.

In the twenty minute flight between Roatan and La Cieba, however, this didn’t make a big difference. Without a pressurized cabin, the aircraft flew close to the sea level, letting passengers gaze out of the window into the crystal clear Caribbean waters. Were this a flight between Toledo and Detroit in the middle of winter, the passengers would have been less happy. But with a cool sea breeze blowing in our faces, blue sea below and a laid back attitude all around, the flight was bliss.

The Accidental Chef Travels: An Introduction

by Kendra Bailey Morris on

This post is the first installment of my culinary travel feature column, “The Accidental Chef Travels”. Come join me to discover all that’s delicious!

I think the best way to introduce myself is to begin with the basics. I grew up in an unusual family — part West Virginia hillbilly (we proudly hail from the mountainous coalfields) and part academic, since despite having a few economic and cultural cards stacked against us, the majority of my relatives as well as myself went on to receive advanced degrees, write books and teach university level courses. Go figure.

Because of this dichotomous existence, I’ve spent much of my life straddling the gray area, somewhere between cheesy grits and Chateaubriand. Yet, despite this oxymoron-esque lifestyle, one thing has remained constant — my love of worldly exploration and an inherent need to taste every last bit of it.

I still believe that the best place on earth is my grandmother’s kitchen in Princeton, West Virginia, where she, well into her upper-nineties, whipped up the best fried pies and coconut cake you’ve ever tasted. Yet, while granny’s comfort food remains unbeatable, I still spend my days infatuated with what the rest of the world has to offer.

Whether I’m noshing fresh-fried conch fritters at a roadside stand in the Turks and Caicos, nibbling blocks of Spam musubi while ogling the fresh Saturday morning produce at the Hilo Farmer’s Market or learning how to make Salade Gascogne (an explosion of poultry consisting of grilled duck breast, foie gras and duck confit) with chef/cookbook author Kate Hill in rural Southwest France, like many of you, I am compelled to taste my way across the globe, and I hope you’ll join me for this exciting and delicious ride.

It’s been said, that there are those of us who travel, and those of us who travel to eat. For gastronomes like myself, planning an entire vacation around what to eat and where is the norm. So for all of you food junkies out there, I plan to highlight an array of culinary activities such as cooking schools, food and wine immersion opportunities, food-focused resorts, cruises, even sustainable farm visits. And you can bet I won’t be leaving out off-the-beaten-track treasures such as backstreet markets, paper plate dives and mobile cart munchies. From truffle hunts to salmon fishing, I hope to bring you the best of what’s tasty and where.

I won’t be leaving out those who travel frequently for business or pleasure either, including folks who seek the very latest in restaurant news and reviews, both on the ground and in the air. For my “Mile High Dining Club” installments, I’ll cover the latest trends in taste, whether you’re kicking back in first-class or clutching your knees in coach.

For those looking to further their culinary travel education, I’ll be adding a “How-To” feature. From how to sniff and sip your way through Napa to avoiding an untimely death when eating Fugu, a Japanese pufferfish, I hope to share with you some great insider tips and tricks.

Bottom line? This column is going to fun, lots of fun, and I can’t wait for you to join me as we explore the many exciting tastes, textures and aromas that our world has to offer.

—Kendra