Routes you dread doing?

[Mr Mac]

Humble SLF, but would have to say Kinshasa, Lagos, Luanda top my list although I have not been to any of them for the last 3 years so they may have improved !. Can put up with most other places although Home land security seem to be taking more of an interest in me these days for some reason, resulting in some periods being delayed at immigration when entering the Empire, which is putting me off the place a bit. Russia and the Stans also some times a little interesting although in Almaty I always seem to meet same immigration officer and get whisked through.


Regards
Mr Mac

[fantom]

Many years ago with Dan 727s I would go to TLV and, when we arrived, would always find the aircraft had been stripped of anything moveable. Soap; toilet rolls; magazines; just anything.

Lovely people.

[Capetonian]

Argentinians specialised in that too, used to strip bare the hotel bedrooms in CPT and try to get it onto the flights out!

[TopBunk]

Collectively the Tel Aviv passengers are the most rude, inconsiderate, selfish, demanding and generally charmless bunch of people I have ever met.

Second only to the orthodox New Yorkers of the same persuasion!

[vctenderness]

You obviously haven't met many Russians

[rotornut]

My cousin, a long retired f/a, hated any route in a 747.

[bondim]

Friday night Ibiza out of UK!! Vile.

[Capetonian]

You obviously haven't met many Russians

There are two very different types of Russians.

There are the normal, decent, educated ones whom you meet in Russia and sometimes elsewhere. I met two lovely Russian families when I was in Cyprus a few weeks ago. Charming, quiet, modest, educated, refined, and lovely company. When I was in Russia I mostly met people like that. They are the majority, who tend to go unnoticed.

Then there are the loud, vulgar, trashy, obnoxious new-money Russian scum who frequent places like Knightsbridge, Cannes, Dubai, and parts of Mallora and the Spanish Costas. I had the misfortune to connect onto an Austrian Airlines flight from Vienna to Barcelona where two vile Russian couples, fat ugly gold-bedecked men with cheap trashy tartlets hanging out of leopard skin croptops and miniskirts boarded in business class and started mouthing off about 'you call this first class, my f***ing car is bigger than this, these seats are too small', abusing the cabin attendants and other passengers, eventually the Captain was called and threatened to offload them straight to prison!

They are the minority, but because of their brash and loud vulgar behaviour, they get noticed. Russians in general are fine people, oppressed for years by communism and now by an equally evil dictator.

[Wannabe Flyer]

Caprtonian: very good point and pretty much applicable to all nationalites. Hard to buy class, and even harder to buy good education!

[Rwy in Sight]

It just take a generation and make sure you pick your battles carefully and never make a scene in public. Some behind the scenes action if you really have the money and status can be very efficient.

By the way does it make any difference on the difficulty of the flight the timing in the day/ week / year - a flight on Monday very bad on Thursday no problem?

Rwy in Sight

[vctenderness]

Very much so. The time of day often dictates the type of passenger. Early morning departures from business destinations can be a nightmare with people being extra grumpy and quite upset if you, obviously, only have yesterday's news papers at out stations.

[Tray Surfer]

Milan and Rome.

Milan, especially Monday morning and Friday evening, just awful. Big club cabins with fingers clicking left right and centre… Nothing makes a flight like finger clicking…

Rome, during the summer. You either ended up with 100 Italian school children who were obnoxious, rude, horrid creatures with teacher escorts who could not give two hoots what they got up to… OR… Cruise passengers and American tourists who thought they would be able to bring two 4' fake Roman columns onto the plane as hand baggage and no one would notice…

[beamer]

Worst route - A14/M6 to work
Best route - M6/A14 going home

[crewmeal]

It used to be ultra orthodox hasidic jewish pax who never washed on the late departures from JFK demanding to say their prayers at sunrise using galleys and crew rest areas.

[Simplythebeast]

I was passenger on a flight from JFK to Manchester last year with BA. Majority of passengers seemed to be Ultra Orthadox Jews. They completely ignored any cabin crew requests regarding seatbelts etc. During a period of turbulence over Newfoundland several of them ignored the seatbelt warnings, walked to the exit doors and started prayers. I must admit for the first time in my life I actually hoped there might be a bit of severe turbulence and those arrogant fools would fly around the cabin. Really wound me up, particularly their disrespect to the crew.
Having experienced the straight talking authoritive stance provided by Quantas staff to ignorant passengers I think this would have been interesting to witness on an Australian carrier.

[aml125]

BA stopped flying JFK/MAN many years ago. This was probably an American Airlines code share flight.

[mikedreamer787]

Anything to anywhere in India at any time.

Ditto for Dhaka.

Worse if I have to overnight those places.
One of the extremely few times I welcome
absolute minimum rest. The pubs we stay
at are reasonable - but I can't stand the
filth crap and bull**** outside.

..And the Bangladudes who take us from DAC
to the hotel (as well as the hotel staff) have
a real bloody attitude.

[BARKINGMAD]

Even as a former occupant of seat 0A, l dreaded the TLVs because of the unacceptable grief which the CC had to suffer.

Plus the extra strain of listening to the PA as I taxy'd in/out either end of the sector, as there was always an animal on the taxyway for which l had to jam on the brakes as the CC were calling for the pax to remain seated.........

[C-GVKI]

Moroccan & Italian flights. When ya get down to it all the people are usually actually but my god they don't get the concept of boarding quickly, or cabin baggage. The boarding is the worst part, I usually just laugh about it afterwards, usually in disbelief.

[Espada III]

SLF here. Observant Jew as well.

I am NOT going to call anyone here an Antisemite for having a go at the TLV route or Ultra-Orthodox Jews on other routes. The reasons for the lets say lack of politeness are two-fold.

1. Ultra-Orthodox Jews have this idea that nothing is more important than their religious needs. This is not rudeness per se, but they are brought up this way and despite a great deal of correspondence in the Jewish newspapers nothing will change. The reason is that these people rarely venture out of their little world, do not have access to the internet and genuinely have no idea that they are causing offence. Because their womenfolk are downtrodden and expect to be told what to do, these men do not have someone else to tell them they are doing something wrong. If I acted like they do, my wife would slap me down something hard.
2. The Tel Aviv route also includes Israelis who have a very Levantine manner, which sounds like everyone is arguing, but in reality they are just asking how their friend's mother is. However they have no concept of queuing (try getting a bus is Tel Aviv) and only take orders from their army commander. I love going to Israel, but the flight can be a nightmare, as some people know so many other people on the plane, they they effectively walk the from UK to Israel glad handing the whole plane. The trick is to find those passengers who appear to be Jewish, calm and know a few people. Ask them to sort out the unruly ones and the problems will disappear quickly.

I would hope that CC would prefer the flight to TLV than to other slightly less tolerant and warm destinations. It does usually calm down once the plane has left the tarmac. However, I do genuinely do not understand why boarding starts so close to departure time. If you know a particular flight always takes 20 minutes longer to board than the average, start boarding that little bit early or pad the timetable so that people do not get fractious that they are going to be late.