Eating jelly babies while customers wilt

And so, a Thursday night dash to the airport for a flight to Bangkok on a visa run.

Onto the Air France plane, mercifully at the right time. But the plane is warm. Very warm. It’s still thirty degree plus outside and inside seems much the same.

Bawling babies are fanned by sweaty parents. Sweat is running down my back. People are shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

In time, we set off.

We are informed that the cinema system isn’t working. But they will reboot. They try this three times but it refuses to work. Pity the poor bored bastards travelling all the way to Paris.

We are served our snack. Incredibly I find mine to be tuna and ham. In the same sandwich.

When we reach Bangkok we are told everyone must leave the plane. Those with kids and assorted kiddie paraphernalia grumble as they collect everything together. Then the tannoy says there has been a mistake – turns out those going all the way to Paris can stay put.

We leave.

Four days later and we’re back and in the queue for the Air France check in. So paranoid that we’d get stuck in Bangkok traffic and miss the flight, we arrive early. There’s only one couple ahead of us.

Check in opens and we’re straight to a desk. They take the passports and… “just one moment sir.”

And then? Well lots of chatting between themselves. No word to us but something appears to be up. The tech guy visits. People press buttons.

Fifteen minutes later I’m slumped against the check in. Provided with as little information as we are, everyone else presumes it’s us that is holding up the line.

I ask our Air France guy again what the problem is. He doesn’t know. He doesn’t say sorry. He repeats: “Just a moment”.

They give up. They issue handwritten, none computerised tickets. Someone important looking walks by and we ask them.

“The system is down,” she says.

Into customs and they ask me what this handwritten slip is. I tell them it’s my boarding pass. They appear to accept that.

Loan isn’t so lucky. Not unreasonably her customs officer points out that her ticket has neither a date nor a flight number on it. After prolonged discussions she’s let through.

We trundle towards our gate. Boarding time comes and goes and we’re still locked out. The airport design means we are above the gate but we can’t enter it. Looking down you can see smiling Air France staff sharing a tin of jelly babies while spread out on the comfy chairs (see above).

Eventually, around the time we should be flying out they inform us there will be a delay. We’re still not allowed through to the gate so we continue to make do with the not-quite-enough, hard chairs in the “corridor” upstairs.

Eventually they allow customers downstairs. The system, lay out and the decision to keep everyone out until after the stated boarding time, means a long queue on the metal stairs.

We board the plane half an hour late. Confusion all around as everyone appears to be sat in everyone else’s seats. Eventually 40 minutes late we set off.

I’d planned to cut down on the lengthy customs process by filling in the arrival card during the flight. They say they’ve run out.

They tell me I’ll have to wait till we arrive.

So this is not a golden age of air travel. This was not a remarkable journey. By current standards, it wasn’t even a remarkably bad journey. Just continually disappointing.

We’ve become so used to airlines generally underperforming that I considered whether writing this would just be see as whining. Maybe.

But I read recently a hotel owner saying that in order to get decent TripAdvisor review it wasn’t enough just to please customers –  they had to be “thrilled”.

And maybe it’s not fair to compare economy class travel with upscale accommodation.

But I was so far from being thrilled.

And it begs the question…as far as air travel is concerned, is this what we have to settle for?