Airports
Sitting here in DFW Airport in Dallas with a couple of hours break between flights on our way from Nashville to Los Angeles. This has been one of the better airports we’ve visited on our travels. Our flying experiences have been a real mixed bag. If I had to generalize, I’d say that the airports here in the US are much more efficient than those in England. Nashville airport, like the city in general, was compact but very pleasant and friendly and easy to get around. Boston airport, the first we hit in the US, was also full of helpful staff, although we really had to rush to make our connection there. And Dallas so far, though much bigger, has been fine. Not too far to walk with a monorail running between terminals. The only dodgy thing about this place has been watching out the window the baggage handlers roughly throwing luggage onto a plane and imagining my new guitar, which is checked in somewhere in this airport, being treated in a similar way. Otherwise, it’s been nice here exchanging a few text messages with ob1, who happens to be staying here in Dallas at the moment. In fact, when we arrive in LA tonight it will be the first stop on our travels where we haven’t had someone we know to catch up with.
English airports were much more crowded, rushed, and disorganised. Queues were much longer and security staff less pleasant. In Manchester airport we had to wait nearly an hour for our flight’s luggage to start circulating – longer than the time we spent in the air! At Heathrow our plane was waiting for 40 minutes or so on the tarmac for someone to come and attach the doors so we could get out.
So that’s airports – how about airlines? South African airways were fine – nothing too special but no problems. British Airways we had a long flight from Africa with great service, individual seat TVs etc and then a short flight to Manchester with pretty average service. American airlines have been okay, although our first flight today had a water leak dripping from the ceiling on take-off. The other airline we flew was American Eagle, which I wasn’t very impressed with – disorganised check-in, average in-flight service and a tiny plane with a bumpy ride that made us all a little sick, especially Jennifer..
From here on in we’ve only got four more flights between here and home – two on American airlines : from here to LA today and then to Honolulu next Saturday, and then two on Qantas : from Hawaii to Sydney and then Sydney to Perth. In 2 weeks from today we’ll be home.
Categories : Travel | 2 Comments
