A new airline proposal…

2/8/11.

Does anyone have $10million to invest in a new airline called frills without the nonsense? Let me explain our business model. Take all the trimmings of a Singapore airlines flight- good service, free wine, edible food, good TV and movies and combine this into a no nonsense fast service. So when you get on the plane they give you your food, booze, pillows, vanity kit and ear phones. Collect the food trays 20miiutes later and then let you sleep. As it is now this process takes 2.5 bloody hours seriously eating into your sleeping time. Oh and our airline will only wake you up 45miniutes before you land thus extending your sleeping time. This way you have a chance of getting 5-7 hours of sleep on a 10 hour flight. Singapore airlines method leaves only 3.5 hours of sleep time thus creating tired, grumpy and jet lagged Luke and James.

So it was in the context we arrived in Melbourne and to boot two hours early because of the incredibly strong tailwinds. It was not all bad though as we did get to fly on the worlds the Airbus A380. The only way this can be described is a huge beast. The wings are so big you can barely see the ends of them from the window. There are two floors including ‘cabins’ which are private rooms with a door but for 10k I think you would have to be an investment banker to afford that. Never the less the plane was so big we were surprised it could get off the ground. There were 853 passengers and over 5000 square feet of floor space. Wow

Well anyway back to us. We arrived in Melbourne at 6am tired and grumpy. We then had the fun of a 45miniute wait to get though passport control, a scrum to get our bags and then another 45miniutes waiting to have our luggage screened. One can only imagine how long it would have taken if they then chose to open our bags.

Finally emerging from the airport we realise quite how fucking expensive Oz is. It was going to be a shock coming from Asia but with the exchange rate as poor as it is now we nearly fell over. We get $1.5 to the pound as opposed to $3 to the pound 18 months ago making a can of coke cost about 2quid if not more. Oh my I think I was only saved from a coronary by the fact that I was too tired to have one!

After handing over a sum equivalent to a small countries GDP we boarded the sky bus for the journey into Melbourne. Sometime later we arrived at the guest house and had 5 hours to kill before we could check in. Eventually the minutes ticked by and we got the keys to our room complete with a wobbly bunk bed. In very short order we were asleep and then awake again as we needed to get into Oz time sleeping patterns. I woke up feeling a fraction less tired but even grumpier as I had developed the ubiquitous airplane cough and cold… the same one I had when I arrived in Bali. Did I mention that the new airline would also have medicinal chemicals being sprayed out for the duration of the flight to kill all bugs? There may be some work needed to make this safe but if only 10% of the passengers die it may be a chance worth taking????

The evening was spent scouring the shops for anything cheap that we could buy for dinner followed by some family guy on the laptop before falling into a coma like sleep for 12 glorious hours. Bliss.