[LuganoPirate]

I wish we could go back to those days Anthony, maybe not the Flying boats, not that I’ve ever been in one, I’m a bit too young to have flown in one, but nostalgia for the old days is very much alive.

Have you read Alexandra Frater’s “Out of the Blue”? Great book in which he flies in the Sunderlands.

Has to be Bombay Sapphire, stirred with a slice of lime!

PS. We had a Latin teacher named Anthony Dunn, hence my question in the other thread. Sorry for asking but I was curious as we lost touch with him.

[GavTrav]

I’ve just returned from a surprising trip in Palma, Mallorca. I’m pretty much used to flying with mediocre to high end airlines. This week, I flew with Ryanair. I was staggered. Safety seemed to take a back seat after lucre. I’d read reviews of Ryanair, but it’s a bloody amazing fact they are allowed to fly. Cockpit door opened at least six times during the flight. Head stewardess constantly opening cockpit door and chinwagging with pilot. Shortly before landing, a passenger vomited before she got to the loo. Cabin crew opened the cockpit door and discussed it with the pilot. As we were on landing approach, they yanked her out of the toilet and stuck her at the front of the plane with a sick bag. Earlier in the flight, when cabin crew tried to sell ‘smokeless cigarettes’ an old woman lit a real cigarette and smoked the whole thing. It was only when a passenger reported it that one cabin crew member rushed down and said, ‘no, you can’t smoke’. The old cow wasn’t even penalised. Ryanair. Fckin joke airline!

[AnthonyDunn]

@ GavTrav – 09/09/2012 00:54 GMT

You didn’t say whether, this being S****air, they charged for the use of the sick bag – and presumably on a barf by barf basis…!

[capetonianm]

I’ve seen CC smoking on an Iberia transatlantic flight in the galley at night. They denied it but the hand quickly going behind the back and the smell was just a bit of a clue. Snuck back a few minutes later and zapped a photo, they then threatened me with the police if I didn’t delete it, and when I refused, with threats of violence.

[craigwatson]

GavTrav – there are no rules forbidding the opening of the cockpit door, pilots will need to relieve themselves, have a meal served, get a drink, discuss operational issues (which may/may not include where you are going for dinner that night), and to be fair it sounds like the interphone may have been unservicable, it which case the above sounds completely normal.

The cigarette issue could have just been a misunderstanding, an old women seeing the crew selling “electronic” cigs and not realising that they were indeed electronic, and so lights up, when the crew noticed she was told she is not allowed, if she puts it out then fine, end of story, not sure what you would have expected them to do other than what they did?

[azidane]

Having flown Egypt Air numerous times I would almost guarantee that Martyn was right about smoking in the cockpit as on one flight from CPH-CAI one of the male stewards carried out the meal services with a packet of Marlboro Red in his white see through shirt pocket and when he reached the galley at the end then went in the toilet to have a smoke and when he came out a fight nearly started after passengers at the rear of the plane complained and he took offence. Bearing in mind that immigration, customs and police officers at Cairo Airport smoke while checking your passport, bags etc.

[millionsofmiles]

Especially flying back home, the ritual was:
– Relax in sleeper seat (old F), get a beer and a nice drink on the rocks as a chaser. Light a Marlboro. Enjoy!

That worked until about 1996, when LH and others abandoned smoking. Fomerly, in the eighties and early nineties, you got free packs of cigarettes in F, SWISSAIR even put a pocellain ashtray on your table.
THOSE were the days.
Nowadyays: puristic, health-absorbed, unibrained.

[capetonianm]

Smoking is foul and harmful at the best of times and places. On board an aircradt is probably the worst of places to have people creating noxious carcinogens for others to inhale. There is also the safety aspect to consider.

I remember coming back from CPT on one of the very last smoking flights of LH. 1996 sounds about right.

[IanFromHKG]

In the olden days, if you were flying a Chinese airline and asked for a no-smoking seat, they would (without physically moving you) take your boarding pass and stamp “NO SMOKING” on it with a rubber stamp. Hey presto, your own little smoke-free bubble, precisely the size of your own seat!! The fact that everyone else around you could smoke, and the possibility that you might therefore get some smoke secondhand, clearly hadn’t occurred to them. Reminds me of the time when HK was considering introducing a ban on smoking in public places including restaurants – in the ensuing and increasingly vitriolic correspondence cluttering up the letters pages of the local newspaper, someone made a trenchant comment which I will always remember: “Having a no-smoking area in a restaurant is like having a no-pissing area in a swimming pool”…

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