On Sat, 21 Feb 2004 21:30:23 -0500, "james_anatidae"
wrote:

All other things being equal (price, time, route) which would you prefer to
fly?


Well when I flew to the UK last June I was pretty pee'd off at having
been booked on Qantas, but they had the full "LCD in the back of the
seat" in-flight entertainment centre and the food was quite good.

THen, when I flew to LA in July I flew Air NZ.

Boy, the Air NZ food was crap, the service sucked and if you wanted to
watch a movie there were no LCDs and you simply had to crane your head
around to get a *glimpse* of the CRT monitor a dozen or so rows up
front.

Qantas gave me a nice little package with a toothbrush, toothpaste,
eye-shades and elastic socks -- that was nice. Air NZ gave me nothing
of the kind.

As well as very nice food at mealtimes, Qantas also offered some quite
palettable inflight snacks - AirNZ offered some non-descript
cracker-like things that came in an unmarked white plastic bag and
tasted revolting. Nobody in the seats around me actually ate them.

Qantas also handed out bottled water at regular intervals -- Air NZ
didn't.

There was one rather snotty flight-attendant within the Qantas cabin
crew but most of the AirNZ crew seemed far more interested in chatting
about what they'd been doing the night before than actually serving
people.

Qantas had enough meals to ensure everyone got their selection from
fish or chicken. Air NZ ran out of the preferred meal about half way
through the meal-run and lots of people were left with something they
didn't want -- and quite a few didn't actually eat.

Qantas is not perfect but Air NZ is absolutely attrocious by
comparison.

On any flight of more than a few hours it's outrageous that people
should be stuck in a plane without a personal LCD entertanment center
and it was clear that AirNZ were being *really* cheap in every area.

And this was *BEFORE* they went on their austerity drive!

--
you can contact me via http://aardvark.co.nz/contact/