I laughed when you suggested Qantas was the most reliable airline. As I type mywife is in the air on a three hour late Qantas flight from jakarta to sydney…
http://www.flightstats.com/ is a great website to see just how late some are (check yesterday’s QF42 for the above mentioned delay).

Best in my experience is THAI — particularly recently when our travels have been “altered” by the arrival of our baby — the aircraft may be a little tatty, but the service and the helpful nature of the staff & crew never cease to amaze.

Worst, AdamAir was a shocker even before they crashed.

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I’m like you Darren, I’ve never had any bad flight experiences. This may be partly due to the fact that I generally travel in low season. I’d heard about a lot of delays in peak Summer season from my friend who’s a college lecturer so has to travel in peak season. Also I’ve flown from airports in central Scotland or Newcastle and the larger airports like Heathrow or Manchester are maybe more prone to knock on effects of delays.

The majority of my recent flights have been with Ryanair, the flights usually arrive a few minutes early.

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We always have comments from clients, ” Well what is the airline like” especially relating to Charter flights.
Personally to me a flight is only as good as the Cabin Crew and Flight deck make it ,and what side of the bed they’ve woken up on.
I Would have thought Air Babylon must be the worst in the World ( well worth the read, especially where the stewards have a competition by rolling Toilet Tissue down each Aisle, Place an end in the Toilet, and then Flush to see whose Paper diappears First).
Please don’t try this yourselves, especially on a return leg from India or Kenya, Whereby every bit of toilet tissue is probably needed by every passenger!!

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Best: British Airways

Friendly staff, never been delayed and comfortable flights all the time.

Worst: Virgin Atlantic.

Rude staff, always delayed, and various booking problems.

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I’m like you Darren, never had a bad flight.

My favourite airline though is EasyJet though, cheap, and cheerful.

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Worst, Air Canada, best, British Airways, but then I do work for them

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Funny that I found your site because we have just returned from a nightmare journey with Delta. The flight was supposed to be from Washington to London, but we were diverted to Copenhagen, and then to London, six hours later.

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Probably my best Flight would have to be flying Club with BA to Bahamas and Cayman Islands. The rep knew the Station Manager in the Bahamas and we all got upgraded. On the Outbound flight we were all in economy, and there were quite a few empty seats. One Guy was spralled across three seats and was reluctant to move away from the seats we should have been occupying. Eventually the Guy was moved by a stewardess to his proper seat behind us where he was sandwiched between two quite large passengers.
Just before take off the stewardess called out several names ( all the Travel agents on the fam trip) and mentioned we had re-allocated seats, 1a, 1 b etc.
The Guy behind us was very indignant and asked us how we had managed to get up upgraded, The Stewardess replied ” Well you wanted a bit more space for your self, so after take off you can move to the seat in front of you, and the people you inconvenienced have all moved up into Club.
I still remember his red face to this day.
Emirates Flight to Dubai and their new ICE system is Cool ( sorry about the pun) 140 + channels, Pause a film while you nip to the loo, great service and palatable food.

Most memorable flight before the days of 9/11 was with British Caledonian ( Ok showing my age now) and being called to the flight deck and Night time landing / and take-off again at Athens for a re-fueling stop to Kenya.
On the return was called up again to the Flight deck and landing in day -light was awesome. They also changed crew here and couldn’t believe it when the Pilot announced to the BA Mechanics that he had wiggled this button, and that one wasn’t working, and that they should have a look at this Widget here before letting the next Pilot take over. Fantastic experience though.

My Worst ever-lasting experience was waiting at Corfu airport in my repping days in 1985 , and we were expecting passengers from Manchester on a British airtours charter. The Plane never arrived due to a Fire that killed 53 passengers and two crew.

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Lee, that must have been awful when you discovered about that fire on the flight from Manchester to Corfu. I know that air travel is statistically relatively safe but when something does go wrong it’s horrifying because it often leads to large numbers of fatalities.

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As far as I can recollect Karen, luckily the tour operator I worked for ( Medina Holidays) had not many people on the Manchester departure, and I believe our passengers were amongst the survivors, the difficulty was that we had quite a few passengers in resort who were due to go back to Manchester from Corfu on what would have been the inbound flight.

I Think i will use my repping days as an entry to the BLOG-A Thon, they certainly were 4 great years, and as well as the down-sides of being a rep, there were many Highlights.

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That sounds horrible Lee. I bet you had loads of fun being a rep. My daughter is thinking about applying to be a holiday rep for her two years out of university later this year.

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The worst has to be Air India, terrible aircraft.

The best, Thai airways, comfy flight, nice food, and good entertainment.

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I fly KLM tomorrow Darren, so I will let you know what experiences I have with them.

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