Thursday 22 July 2010

LyinAir? Thieving Air??

You know the ones....Flew in from Katoviche just now, already depressed having seen the end of the line for the 1.1 million at Auschwitz, i really just wanted to get home.

My first mistake was to order a pannini. In fact my first mistake was to order anything at all as the cabin crew had no change. I wanted to pay in zlotys or whatever they call the local currency. That confused the buggers, first they converted it to Euros then to pounds and thus worked out the change in sterling. Having done so they then didnt give me it as they didnt have any!

So I had ordered this pannini. They should use the change they thieved to teach the staff how to recognise a pannini. Actually its quite easy there is a picture of one on the menu card! What they brought was called a baquette. It said so on the label although it wasnt even a baquette as it wasn't made with french flour. Indeed it was a normal white bread roll!

Has anyone ever microwaved a bread roll? Doesnt work does it.!!

So they offered a refund. They calculated that into Euros, then into zlotys and then gave me some zlotys and some sterling. However they managed it the refund left me a further £1 out of pocket as their calculations appeared erroneous.

A debate ensued between senior cabin crew and me as he claimed that this was in fact a pannini since it came from France and of course the French only have french bread and not Italian bread? That lost me the will to live, and since the plane hadnt been to France and wasnt even flying over France didnt explain anything. Including why it was a microwaved bread roll and how they continued to fail to understand that.

So I stayed hungry and out of pocket until the the plane landed. It landed 15 minutes late but they still played the bells and announced how this was yet another flight that was on-time and how 99% of all their flights land on time. I guess that's when they dont cancel them instead.

Why the need to lie about such trivia is beyond me.

On landing the plane swerved viciously to the left, and had to be corrected before the air brakes were applied. As a result I also failed to understand why the entire plane burst into applause.

This is something which to my way of thinking is usually reserved for pilots who demonstrate exceptional skill or do something heroic but it seems to have become a normal sport on Lyinair, such that the passengers feel obliged to heap praise on the pilot for simply landing at all!

Anyway they didnt charge me to get off which I considered to be a bonus, and there was no charge to use the steps down from the plane either. Missed a trick there Michael!

And on a slightly more sobering note, the airport bus that took some of the passengers to our plane tonight had blacked out and boarded up windows. I noted with dismay that Polish workers were ferrying people about in boarded up transport crammed in like sardines. I'd heard quite enough of that behaviour earlier in the day.