Flights of fancy

Well I must say: thank goodness British Airways didn't go on strike...and I (selfishly) made it back to splendid Singapore. This rant isn't going to be about the politics of strike action (I'll save that for another time), but rather about how impressed I was with BA's service.

I've been living in splendid Singapore for over 6 years now - and by the way I think "splendid Singapore" a much more apt and "out there" epithet that "uniquely Singapore" adopted by the tourism board here - and during this time have been a loyal advocate of Singapore Airlines (or SQ as we affectionately refers to them, using their airline code as shorthand). They are indeed hard to beat; well designed cabins, impeccably trained crew, the slimmest women (and men) you've ever seen in the sky; and a record for efficiency and accuracy that is legendary.

I had some Cathay Pacific OneWorld miles to use up before they expired and managed to secure (with great difficulty) business class flights back home for Christmas with British Airways. It was going to cost me virtually nothing and I thought "why not?!".

The flight to London was a great start with wonderful seats (newly designed) and much more comfortable than the "old" SQ seats and even better laid out than the new SQ "largest seat in business class" mammoth. The cocoon-style pod of BA is a tad hemmed-in to begin with, but once you get over your innate sense of claustrophobic self-preservation, the seat is soft, long and terribly enticing to a good night's sleep. I always feel the SQ wide-berth leather-coated chair-cum-bed with a donkey leg, lie sideways to sleep approach, a bit awkward.

But surely SQ trumped BA on service, I hear you shout...well, actually the service both ways on BA was very very good; welcome drinks were served, food was delivered with precision (mostly) and the crew were polite and engaging. There were glitches, of course there were, but that's a fact of a very complicated service offering with many variables...I was slightly peeved, I must confess, that after telling at least 5 BA staff at different stages of my arrival that I wanted to use the arrivals lounge to shower before my connecting flight to Newcastle and not one of them advised me I could use the departures lounge at Terminal 5, even though I was flying economy, since I'd arrived in business class from HK. So I did waste about 30-40 minutes exiting customs and putting myself through unnecessary security searches to get back through - ah well, customers often know more about the products than the brand ambassadors themselves.

I could have wished for more TV choices (films were OK) not knowing a single comedy option on offer and feeling short-changed on the documentary front, but these are small points in the big scheme of things - and coming back to Singapore, I did watch a fabulous commentary on Beethoven, which imbued me with a serene joy.

So all in all, a delightful experience and one I will most likely repeat - SQ's penny-pinching of late has become a tad annoying and the food quite inedible in all classes - so it's not very often I wave the Union Flag and shout bravo England!, but on this occasion I feel I shall and more importantly, I feel that BA deserves it.

Well done.
And by way, the photo is of Carlisle, Cumbria showing a snowy lane on 22nd December.