Air Pacific operated the Qantas flights from Hawaii to Auckland via Fiji. On behalf of all future travellers on this otherwise perfectly adequate airline, please can a contract be taken out on the lives of all those responsible for the composition, performance and decision to play on board the appalling artless cacophany that passed for music while the plane was on the ground.
The written word can only begin to convey its true awfulness. Thank god, dear reader that I have not been able to upload a sound file to this blog. Instead I will ask you to imagine the musical fusion that was 'Tom Jones meets the 1970's New Seekers in Hawaiian folk ballards with steel guitar'.
Horrible music and a very early start aside, this has been a long day's travel. At least the seats were better than the flight to Hawaii from San Francisco. The food too was better, though that statement should be read in the context of airline food as a whole. The coconut chicken curry can only be described, even kindly, as a culinary misdemeanor.
Our stop in Fiji was brief; I would have preferred briefer. We might then have stayed on our plane. We asked the cabin staff whether or not we would have to change planes in Fiji. We were told yes. However that would not present a problem as we would be shown to the transit area and we knew anyway that our luggage had been checked all the way. So we duly disembarked and sure enough there was a transit area....where the hand luggage that we had just carried off the plane down a 20ft corridor was x-rayed, we were security checked as if we'd just checked in; the bottled water that our stewardess had just given us on board was confiscated and binned, the onward flight boarding passes we had been given in Honolulu were re-issued with different seat numbers and after a short wait in the departure lounge we climbed on board the very aircraft from which we had disembarked not 45 minutes earlier.
Brewery and piss-up spring to mind. The time shift on this flight was the strangest thing. Our Sunday morning flight from Honolulu, complete with a Sunday paper, landed just a few hours later on Monday morning. We turned our watches back by one hour and forward by one day. Where did our Sunday go?
And finally can anyone tell me why, when people holiday in far off exotic locations, they feel the need to commit crimes of fashion? There is without doubt a good case for outlawing certain shirts and trousers!
The written word can only begin to convey its true awfulness. Thank god, dear reader that I have not been able to upload a sound file to this blog. Instead I will ask you to imagine the musical fusion that was 'Tom Jones meets the 1970's New Seekers in Hawaiian folk ballards with steel guitar'.
Horrible music and a very early start aside, this has been a long day's travel. At least the seats were better than the flight to Hawaii from San Francisco. The food too was better, though that statement should be read in the context of airline food as a whole. The coconut chicken curry can only be described, even kindly, as a culinary misdemeanor.
Our stop in Fiji was brief; I would have preferred briefer. We might then have stayed on our plane. We asked the cabin staff whether or not we would have to change planes in Fiji. We were told yes. However that would not present a problem as we would be shown to the transit area and we knew anyway that our luggage had been checked all the way. So we duly disembarked and sure enough there was a transit area....where the hand luggage that we had just carried off the plane down a 20ft corridor was x-rayed, we were security checked as if we'd just checked in; the bottled water that our stewardess had just given us on board was confiscated and binned, the onward flight boarding passes we had been given in Honolulu were re-issued with different seat numbers and after a short wait in the departure lounge we climbed on board the very aircraft from which we had disembarked not 45 minutes earlier.
Brewery and piss-up spring to mind. The time shift on this flight was the strangest thing. Our Sunday morning flight from Honolulu, complete with a Sunday paper, landed just a few hours later on Monday morning. We turned our watches back by one hour and forward by one day. Where did our Sunday go?
And finally can anyone tell me why, when people holiday in far off exotic locations, they feel the need to commit crimes of fashion? There is without doubt a good case for outlawing certain shirts and trousers!
