Flight Details

The flight itself – apart from the lack of sleep – was amazing! Based on this one experience, I would heartily recommend RJ: they completely beat U.S. / United Airways and came close to what I remember of British Airways of the 90s.

Of course, childhood memories are rather disappointing guides in some things. The chairs, for one, were not the comfortable and enormous monstrosities I remembered from my last Atlantic flight. My feet actually reached the floor, which was disappointing. However, where childish expectations fail, technology surpasses. There was an in-flight screen on the seats in front; I had access to music, movies, television, and an automatic track the airplane map!

First I browsed through the music, staring with the Arabic channel. I discovered two things about Arabic music: they all began with a 2 minute instrumental intro that was not based on any recognizable Western style of rhythm and I could understand most of the songs because they consisted of habibti repeated assiduously and with boy-band ardour. This amused me greatly. (And I exaggerate – a bit. There was one fun song – Leek Lewadek? – that had a really good beat, though.) Then I turned to the classical station: the History of Classical Music was available – beginning with Gregorian chant. This was interesting, until I discovered the movies. I watched Toy Story 3 which I hadn’t seen before – so that is enough to make any flight pretty good.

Then they served the food about an hour after take-off. I am so accustomed to not eating ever on a plane (there’s never any need to), that I was surprised at its sudden appearance after a complimentary beverage (mango juice!) and roasted peanuts. The mango juice was wonderful – this, again, alone would have made any flight delightful. But then, I got more mango juice with the meal. I like mango juice.

I tried to sleep, but there were no comfortable positions. So I watched the Guardians of Ga’Hoole – a movie about owls that had *amazing* CGI animation and a somewhat derivative narrative.

Unfortunately, because of the times of the flight, there wasn’t a chance to look out the window. But it was still cool to see our course – we went just south of Dublin, heading from northwest to southeast across the southwest portion of France (west of Paris), flying across Santorini and then Tel Aviv. (Dad, aren’t you so impressed with my directions?). In between showing various views of our position, outside temperature (an average of -65F!) and altitude, and estimated time of arrival, they also showed an image detailing the direction of the plane with respect to Mecca.

Tried to sleep, but couldn’t; fortunately, having no body clock, I was wide awake when our second meal came. I had ordered vegetarian: there was a main dish, which was a bed of rice with vegetables on top. The first vegetable I couldn’t identify, other than it was some sort of sprouted dicotyledon (why, yes, I took Botany), similar in shape to a soy-bean but similar in taste to dried corn. There were tinned mushrooms, and then cucumber and carrot julienne in some sort of salty flavoring on top; the rest of the meal was very good rolls, tea or coffee, juice, and a fruit cup. It was, alas, not the humongous raspberries I remember from British Airways, but still very good.

I then played a game on the screen – the memory game, where you turn over pairs of cards. By this time, however, I was so tired I was doing very poorly. In fact, it was embarrassing. My embarrassment was only increased by the fact that the gentleman beside me had woken up and was watching the progress. When I got down to eight cards or so I was puzzling over, he pointed out a few and was correct. I then switched to hangman……which I think he would’ve beaten me at, as well.

A few minutes later, we began our descent and I closed the games. The first views I got of Jordan were very reassuring – the countryside looked like the brown patch-work quilt that Iowa is in the late fall.