Eshin Direct

My first time travelling on Iberia resulted in some mixed feelings. On the one hand, it is pretty much like any European airline with an ageing cabin crew that were both fat and to whom the years of travel have not been kind. There was one exception although she did look like she was gaining a little in the hips… it was hard to tell since European women are sometimes big by default. The leg from Madrid to Tenerife resulted in us being booked in some seats that didn’t exist, but the cabin crew did manage to figure it out and find seats for us that were together. Apparently they had combined this flight with an earlier flight and thus had to change planes.

The English bloke next to us was rather irrate about the whole thing and wanted things like the names of the cabin crew to write in and complain. Personally, I don’t think it is entirely fair to blame individual cabin crew members since the problem isn’t likely to have originated from them and sometimes they are left in the lurch by the companies to bear the brunt of the passenger’s anger. But then, I did always have a soft spot for flight attendants…

With ashtrays in the seats, just how old were these planes? I remember seeing a film once with people smoking on aircraft which was rather amusing. I think when I was young and when I first started travelling they still had the choice. How great would that be? Smoking on a plane? It did give me some pause for concern as the plane took off and the coarse landings made me wonder whether it was due to the plane, the pilot or a combination of the both.

On the plus side, the food wasn’t half bad. The first leg of the trip from Amsterdam to Madrid, they indulged us with a nice piece of steak. The second leg saw something less exciting but they’d done us the courtesy of giving us foie gras pate. Not too shabby.

All in all the service wasn’t that bad on Iberia. I guess you have to take into account that it is one of the smaller European airlines, so you can’t expect too much from them (despite being OneWorld). Times like these make you realise how spoiled you are on airlines like Cathay Pacific though.