Long PAL Flight

Couple of things that either irked me, or I found funny during my try flight home last December 21.

1. My flight got delayed for almost an hour and a half. The flight was scheduled at 9:50 PM. When we got to the airport, we found out it was delayed to 11:00 PM. By 11:00 PM, we were just called to board and we actually left the airport at 11:30 PM.

2. Once you're on board, they don't let you sleep at once and it's because the crew will serve you a midnight dinner soon. Not only was the food not good, it was almost 1:30 AM Pacific when we finished. Too sleepy at this point.

3. You can't really sleep soundly in an airplane anyway. So you make do with what you have and you can. But when you are sitting beside this friendly lady, who constantly bumps you with her left elbow, I don't think you can really have any good sleep at all.

4. PAL Flights to and from Vancouver still uses these old model airbuses - they still don't have the lcd screens per seat. You'd have to watch from the center monitors. I personally think they should upgrade the fleet. Manila-Vancouver-Las Vegas flights are usually full anyway.

5. PAL airport design is not good. After disembarking from the plane, you have to walk towards immigration first. The thing is, you have to go down these two long flight of stairs. And take note, only stairs. No escalator. How about if your hand carry is a small luggage? It just doesn't seem right. The engineer or the architect should have thought of considering passengers with luggages when they were designing this building.

6. Carousels in the airport are poorly designed too. Only a few can actually stand by the carousel to wait for their luggages. I had to stand way back, and then take peeks every now and then to see if my luggage is out.

7. But the good thing about the airport? They have porters to help you out, even when trying to get your luggage from the carousel. I just approach a friendly personnel and they get my luggage for me - without asking for any tip! They even put the heavy luggages into my cart.

8. While waiting for my luggage to come out, I heard these two gentlemen standing beside me talking about the flight. One of the men was ranting and said: "Itong PAL talaga, dapat i upgrade na nila yung mga airplane nila. Napakaluma na itong plane na to! Tapos yung mga stewardess, matanda na, masusungit pa!"

Travelling by air isn't always perfect, but it's still something we have to be grateful for. Even though it was a tough 14 hour flight, I'm still thankful that because of them, I was able to come home and be with my family for Christmas. There's still no place like home.

Merry Christmas everyone!