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I am sitting at the airport waiting for final flight home after a trip to Europe, and it is easy to reflect on how air travel has deteriorated in recent years. The bastardization of frequent flyer programs with the airline mergers has been a really bummer, but the travel experience itself has also gone downhill.
My outbound flights really showed how American Airlines has deteriorated. Two of the three flights had to new AA seats with less legroom. My knees were up against the seat ahead of me, and the fact that one of those was the TATL (trans-Atlantic leg) made it much the worse. The tray table would not go all the way down to make it flat because it hit my knees. That TATL leg was in a ratty old 767 that still had the old shallow overhead bins that fill up faster and even though the new style seats had been installed, they had not changed the IFE (in-flight entertainment) with the screens on the back of the seat ahead which would have have lots of choice of movies. Instead, it was the old style drop down screens from the ceiling that were hard to see from many seats and gave no movie choice. The TATL airline meal was the worst I have had ever on an airplane. On the leg from my small home airport to the hub, they have now eliminated the cabin service for drinks. Snacks had bit the dust some years ago. Some things are long gone like the newspapers they used to provide on TATL flights, as well as free mixed drinks. At least on my TATL return flight, I got a newer A330 with a more up to date IFE and the seats still had the old legroom.
I was overall more impressed with the 2 intra-Europe legs I flew on Finnair. The Helsinki to London leg was on one of their new A350-900s, which had decent legroom and great IFE, including external cameras you could watch both on the top and bottom of the plane. But even there, the intra-Europe cabin service was not what it used to be on Finnair, even though they still provided newspapers.
My outbound flights really showed how American Airlines has deteriorated. Two of the three flights had to new AA seats with less legroom. My knees were up against the seat ahead of me, and the fact that one of those was the TATL (trans-Atlantic leg) made it much the worse. The tray table would not go all the way down to make it flat because it hit my knees. That TATL leg was in a ratty old 767 that still had the old shallow overhead bins that fill up faster and even though the new style seats had been installed, they had not changed the IFE (in-flight entertainment) with the screens on the back of the seat ahead which would have have lots of choice of movies. Instead, it was the old style drop down screens from the ceiling that were hard to see from many seats and gave no movie choice. The TATL airline meal was the worst I have had ever on an airplane. On the leg from my small home airport to the hub, they have now eliminated the cabin service for drinks. Snacks had bit the dust some years ago. Some things are long gone like the newspapers they used to provide on TATL flights, as well as free mixed drinks. At least on my TATL return flight, I got a newer A330 with a more up to date IFE and the seats still had the old legroom.
I was overall more impressed with the 2 intra-Europe legs I flew on Finnair. The Helsinki to London leg was on one of their new A350-900s, which had decent legroom and great IFE, including external cameras you could watch both on the top and bottom of the plane. But even there, the intra-Europe cabin service was not what it used to be on Finnair, even though they still provided newspapers.
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