LONDON: I disembarked at Heathrow Airport on Friday, happy and safe from my EygptAir Flight 0777, an airline that doesn't deserve its moniker, Egypt Scare. The scariest part of the journey was checking in. One expects a crowd at an airport but not a demonstration. Maybe the passengers were having a delayed reaction to the referendum during the week, but whatever it was, it certainly had enough passion to rattle the most cynical veteran globe trotter. There were fights at the check-in counters, bruised and distraught tourists, well-dressed men shouting their heads off and luggage trolleys ploughing through queue, skitterling passengers and baggage in the worst of passionate intensity. Memo: Chairman of the Board, EgyptAir Holding Company. Dear Eng. Atef Abdel Hamid Mostafa, can you please invest in a crowd control system to protect your customers. We are being slain before we can get to the $7 'duty free' Egyptian wine to go with the surprisingly tasty poached salmon, served by attentive flight attendants, such as Adel Ibrahim. EygptAir's cabin crew is rated excellent for service in my own Skytrax survey and low on the scary scale. Adel Ibrahim happily brought me blankets, showed me how to get into the lavatory when the "occupied sign is on and even conjured up an English language newspaper for me - The Daily Star Egypt. Of course no flight this day and age is without incident. Not the type of incidents that may have led to EygptAir's "scary tag like the loss of Flight 990 over the Atlantic in 1999 or the 2002 crash in Tunisia. But the fact that two boarding passes were issued for seat 23D. Possibly due to my friend Marylin's British demeanor, this was sorted out politely or possibly because Marylin had done her shouting at check-in when she was told she wasn't on the passenger manifest, despite her brandishing one of the airlines new e-tickets. Over the summer months, EgyptAir is increasing their international flights by 19 percent. This will make 360 international flights per week, so there is no time to waste sorting out the check-in lines. And please do something about the in-flight entertainment. Skytrax, which is an independent Quality Advisor to the world air transport industry, rates EgyptAir as a three-star airline. In-flight entertainment is key to passenger satisfaction and playing two teenage movies to an audience that was predominately over the age of 30 on the Airbus A-330, is just not taking it seriously. Memo: Chairman of the Board, EgyptAir Holding Company. Dear Eng. Atef Abdel Hamid Mostafa, why not make EygptAir a world leader in in-flight entertainment. Richard Branson did it over the Atlantic when he gave out ice-cream buckets during the movie on his Virgin Airline flights. Why not stock the DVD players with art-house, independent and European cinema? And also while you are at it, is there any need for the film to be run for 10 minutes, be turned off and rewound. This happened three times during the teenage Bond-like adventure, "Stormbreaker. Part of the backpackers' creed, from back in the day, was never tell anyone for any reason, how much you paid for an airfare. It didn't matter how cheap it was, there was always someone ready to tell you they had gotten the same fare, far cheaper. But I don't mind saying that EygptAir to London was LE 1,000 cheaper than British Airways. Some may say, you get what you pay for, but EgyptAir does have a reasonably good safety record according to the statistics on Airsafe.com. Certainly much better than Aeroflot, that now goes by the name of Aeroflop, which has had 28 'incidents' since the demise of the Soviet Union. Air France has had the same number of 'incidents' as EgyptAir and other airlines such as American Airlines, United Airlines, Pakistan Airlines, Indonesia's Garuda Airlines and Indian Airlines have had more. One last memo to the Chairman of the Board: Four weeks ago I signed up to the frequent flyer program on the Internet, I hit submit and that is the last I heard of my application. Who likes to fly really? But who likes to get up for work on a Sunday morning. It is something you just have to do. Anyway, overland to London is a bit of a trek, well until the Orient Express is back on the tracks, I'll just have to roll the dice and take my chances in the troposphere, no matter what aluminum tube I inhabit.
