Travellog About Me Itinerary People Airlines Tips It's not pretty. It's not technically brilliant. It's just a travellog, or perhaps a travelogue. Some people with swankier browser-exclusive websites aren't having half as much fun as I am. The other thing you should do to become a successful blogger is change your website to use dotted lines and unreadable tiny fonts wherever possible. -- The Hitchhiker's Guide to Blogging

United I only had a short flight on United and I don't remember anything interesting about it. Swiss International Swiss International Airlines gets the award for cutest safety video... it uses animated characters including a little girl who reminds me of 'Boo' from Monsters Inc. It's back to the old 'chicken or beef' routine for meals though (actually, beef or noodles in this case) no printed menu or announcement explaining what sort of beef or noodles it is. And there was no choice of breakfast at all. There are screens on the seat-backs, but although they're as big as the Emirates ones, the movies are played Qantas-style whenever they're scheduled to be played, rather than when I say so. And there are no games and nothing to say what is on each channel, so it's even worse than Qantas in that respect. Qantas Qantas has the low-budget version of Emirates' seat-back entertainment systems. The screen is much smaller, not a touch-screen, and yet mine had four dead pixels. Although you do get to choose which movie you watch, you don't get to choose when... the movie on each channel is repeated every two and a half hours. There's nothing to tell you when a movie is about to start, so you just have to keep checking to see how far through it is. And forget just leaving the movie of choice playing and waiting for it to get to the start... after the movie is finished and before it starts again there's a couple of minutes in which you can't even stay on that channel. You just have to try again in a few minutes and hope you don't miss much of the start. And no rewinding (or viewing on a big screen) if you have to get out of your seat for a while to let somebody else pass. There aren't channels showing the view from the front or underside of the aircraft either, so if your row happens to be between windows, there's no chance of a view. On the plus side, the system didn't crash. However, I did get sleeping socks, an eyemask, and a travel toothbrush with a tiny tube of toothpaste. The only other time I've flown Qantas was to the Mini Olympics in Rarotonga in 1994, and I remember being envious of the adults who got sleeping socks then. Why anybody would need special socks to sleep in I don't know, but it's a freebie. Lufthansa My basic impression of Lufthansa is, 'boring'. The seats are leather and thus seem nice and luxurious, but somehow there is much less to do. On other airlines, there's hardly time to do anything on a short flight... almost as soon as you're up in the air refreshments are served, and by the time they're finished you're descending again. On Lufthansa, hardly anything happened throughout the flights. I don't remember there even being movies. More time to read, I suppose. Emirates Emirates is great... they give out a printed menu at the start of the flight to make sure you know exactly what your choices are for the meal(s), and on the back of every seat (apart from the ones with nobody behind them!) is a screen on which you can play games, watch the movie or TV program of your choice, listen to music (including comedy from Peter Sellers, Monty Python and others) or watch the view from cameras at the front and underside of the plane. You can pause whatever it is you're watching or listening to, rewind, etc, just as if you had a large DVD collection and a DVD player. The only drawback is that I've seen two of these screens malfunction, and although the staff can reset them, the problems usually come back. British Airways I flew with British Airways (code-sharing with Qantas) all the way from Geneva to Sydney via London and Bangkok in December 2005. The seat-back entertainment system was much the same as that of Quantas, but with 18 channels, and games as well. As for meals, on my first flight there was nothing but tea, coffee and shortbread, due to BA's ongoing dispute with Gate Gourmet (which I always think ought to be pronounced either gate gourmate or gay gourmet.) I was given a 10CHF voucher at the airport to buy some food instead, which almost got me a bottle of juice and a very small beef roll. The other flights had decent food. For one meal the options were announced over the announcement system, for two there was only one option, and for another we were just asked, 'pork or fish' as the flight attendants were bringing the meals around. I got similar freebies to those on Qantas... sleeping socks, toothbrush, toothpaste and eyemask. The flight from Geneva to London that I was supposed to be on was cancelled, so I ended up on an earlier flight, which was delayed but not enough to cancel out the effect of it being an earlier flight. That would be cancellation due to a cancellation, and we can't have that. Air New Zealand The meals are described over the announcement system, which is much better than simply being asked something like, 'chicken or beef?' and not knowing whether the chicken dish is roast chicken or chicken-feet noodles. It falls short of having a printed menu however. The movies on my flight were played on a central screen, which was difficult to see from my seat... if I'd been 5cm taller it would have been fine. Air Canada I don't remember much about Air Canada apart from the 24 hour delay, which was dealt with slowly, but luxuriously -- When things were finally sorted out at about 4a.m, I spent what was left of the night in what is probably the fanciest hotel of my trip. I think the movies were on little screens suspended from the ceiling every half dozen rows or so. Easier to see than on Air NZ. British Midlands International The flight seemed to be over almost as soon as it had begun... I was used to longer flights but a Lufthansa flight of similar length didn't seem so brief.