I knew I'd find a use for my photos of Balinese flora and fauna. I didn't think that use would be as illustration for a posting about air travel, but it does save me having to put names to pictures and is the perfect solution for any reader bored with airline comparisons ...
Which is your airline of choice?
It is fair to say I have never thought of answering my own question with Air and France in that order, my experience of its flights ranging from poor to moderate. And my last encounter with Virgin would have put my nose out of joint had my right knee not already performed the task as I fought a losing battle against the miserly leg room.
BA has featured in positive thoughts often enough; Gulf Air and Qatar have been reliable. And from late 2007, when I moved to Abu Dhabi, to about a year ago, Etihad was easily my preferred carrier.
There was nothing corrupt in this choice. I knew and liked an influential senior Etihad executive during my time in the UAE but the only favour I ever asked of him was for access to the airline's lounge at Cairo after a tour company dumped me at the airport just as a four-hour flight delay was being announced. It turned out to be hopelessly overcrowded, poorly stocked with food and drink and distinctly inferior to what was on offer for all affected passengers in a staff canteen.
That didn't turn me away from Etihad. Nor did the news that they were stripping me of thousands of air miles because I had not yet used them. Deplorable a practice as that may be, it is probably one common to most if not all airlines. What really rankled, however, was the discovery I made, when I did try to use some before they all evaporated, that there is a class of travel even below that of economy.
No, I was informed, I could not use my miles to upgrade to business from London to Kuala Lumpur in January.
Not enough miles? "No, sir, you have plenty of miles." Then what is it? "The ticket you're flying on is not eligible for an upgrade using those miles."
The nearest I could get to understanding this was to imagine that any holiday booked through a travel company is liable to involve flight tickets that put you in a sort of sub-economy seat from which there is no escape.
That still leaves me with good memories of flying Etihad in four different classes: business, economy plus (or whatever they call their equivalent), economy and what should perhaps be called economy minus.
But the trip to Bali, 7,810 miles each way, has now inspired a switch in allegiance to Air Malaysia. UnBransonlike legroom, the friendliest cabin service I have experienced from any airline after turning right rather than left on boarding, excellent in-flight meals, toilets kept clean throughout ... and champagne.
The bubbly came courtesy of one of the friendly hostesses. She'd picked up on my wife's comment that we were off on a 40th wedding anniversary holiday, returning to our seats a couple of hours later with the bottle, elegantly wrapped, smuggled from first class.
Since we were travelling in Bali with one of those group samples of Middle England life that Travel Collection tours tend to assemble, and invariably dined together with the others, we decided to produce our champagne for aperitifs on Nov 16, the date of the anniversary.
Unfortunately for our touring companions, staff at the otherwise impressive Rama hotel in Candi Dasa, eastern Bali felt unable to enter into the spirit of the gesture and occasion. "We'll charge you 150,000 rupiah for corkage," was the response when the possibility was raised. That sounds worse than it is but still converts at more than £10.
We sat in our room and drank it all ourselves.
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