Eight days from now, Ashley and I get on a plane and go to Japan. First we fly into Vancouver, then from there it’s an 11 hour flight to Osaka, Japan. And guess what? The Air Canada plane we’re flying on doesn’t have any power in the seats. AUGH! That drives me nuts – in this era, almost everyone has some sort of electronic device with them, and most of them do not last 11 hours. I ordered one of these today, which hopefully will help. The real solution is for Air Canada to get out of the ’70s and retro-fit their planes with things that airline passengers want. I really hate flying Air Canada – they suck. When I flew back from New York to Calgary, they wanted to charge me $2 to use a pillow. And even on a four (or was it five?) hour flight, they served one drink and didn’t even offer the standard bag of pretzels/chips/whatever.
3 thoughts on “Power on Airplanes: Why Isn’t There More of It?”
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Well, good thing you get a drink. 🙂 If it were Ryanair or some other cheap-o-line then you’d have to pay them for the pillow(s), drinks, pretzels, power outlets, complementary magazine, and such. Still, nowadays you pretty much have to pay to get anything to eat on European airlines (not just the cheap ones) so getting that single free drink can be considered a good normal deal, I think.
Airlines charge more and more, and give less and less. That has been pretty consistent over the past 1/2 dozen years or so (probably more in reality). What angers me even more than your above complaint is the amount of taxes/levies/surcharges Canadians pay on our flights. I’m sorry, but a $99 flight shouldn’t cost $315 or however much it ends up being. Ridiculous!
On another note; have a great trip. I’m envious! I will say, back in 2001, I was fortunate enough to fly first class from Regina to Toronto and then from Toronto to London, both via Air Canada. That was truly an experience and a half, particularly on the double-decker 747 going overseas. If you ever get the opportunity to pay the GROSS costs to do go first class, it truly is a cut above. =)
I am starting to travel more and more by air in the last year. A while ago I found a product that will at least let me charge some of my smaller electronics via the inflight headphone jack. http://www.inflightpower.com I am going to pick up one of these this month. Now if only I could charge my laptop with it.