Bug-Man’s Blog

Lindsay and I have just spent the entire day in the dark. We left London Heathrow bound for Adelaide on Friday night at around 10PM. Once aboard it was dark, and we set off for KL. Heathrow to KL is the long part of the flight. 12 hours! 12 hours and I only got up and walked around twice.

Last time we flew over, Lindsay and I had a seat along a row of three by the window, which is always preferable. Sadly, last time we ended up near the galley and had light thrown in our faces every time they opened the curtain. This time was better, again in a row of three. Unfortunately for us a guy came and sat down in the aisle seat on our row. On a 12 hour flight this isn’t ideal as it really, really doesn’t give you any room to spread out. Here’s our stranger:

I was quite annoyed, as our row was now full but the one in front of us was completely empty, and there was only one guy in the row behind. Oh why can’t they spread things out more nicely. We considered hijacking the row in front of us so we could spread out before anyone else did, but just before we were about to taxi to the runway a lady sat down and got the whole row to herself. Maddening!

But seriously, are those flights ever completely full? I don’t fly internationally all that often but on the two long-haul flights I’ve been on, not every seat is taken. What’s the average seat utilisation on these flights? If it’s 70%, that’s 30% extra room that they could be giving to economy! We want more leg room!

I don’t mind flying and I shouldn’t keep going on about the negative aspects! Oh, but surely I can at least finish on this note. When you are done with your 12 hours of flying you walk towards the front of the plane and you exit through business class and realise that they have all this nice leg room, no strangers sitting next to you and a whole lot more luxury. Then, if not just to rub your economy nose in it even more, you walk further forward and exit through a first class section, which you never really get a chance to see properly because you’re on the move but it’s full of funny looking pods and so much room. About six in an area of space that would usually fit about 30 economy class customers! So sad.

Here’s one of the pods. Compare it to Economy, somewhat illustrated in the picture above!

I am sitting in KL at a Starbucks, re-fueling both myself (with caffeine) and my laptop, with power, and my iPhone, with USB power! It ran out of batteries on the flight over and I need to escape into some music to pass the time!

I am going to go for a walk with Lindsay now… back later!