Aer Lingus (aka “Aer Fungus”, or as my brother likes to call it “CunniLingus”) have recently started flying to several European cities, Malaga among others. This was great news for me when I heard because I know the company and I know they are good and cheap, so having good and cheap flights to Malaga was heaven sent (especially after the other two big competitors from Gatwick – EasyJet and Monarch – have been putting prices up little by little in the last couple of years, making it almost impossible to get a return flight for less than £120 if you’re not booking months in advance)
For work reasons, I’ve flown to Dublin with Aer Lingus quite a lot in the last few months (although not as often as poor Jon!) and I have always found myself in a very comfortable and quiet atmosphere: exactly what you need when you fly regularly. Most of the time they play classical music as you’re boarding and also when you’re leaving the plane. Nothing to complain about really.
But here’s the difference. I flew with Aer Lingus to Malaga just the other day and the difference was huge. Not on Aer Lingus’s part. No. They did everything exactly the same. With the same professionality that I would expect in an London – Dublin flight. The difference was in the people travelling.
In a normal, weekday flight to Dublin you find mostly business people, and some other normal travellers, but business people mainly. The atmosphere is quite, people appreciate the classical music, nobody is drunk and don’t shout down the plane to get their mates attention. That is what you get when you fly to Malaga. I wasn’t expecting anything like a flight to Dublin, but I wasn’t prepared to the kind of unwashed masses and riffraff that I found there.
It saddens me that the only people who ever visit my Spanish neck of the woods are the kind of people that make the Spaniards dislike the British at first sight. The kind of people who go there just because it’s sunny and they can abuse drugs and alcohol, wreck a few pubs, have a few one night stands with beautiful Spanish girls (leaving a few STDs on the way too) and bugger off back to Blighty as if nothing bad ever happened. The kind of people who laughs at the fact that Aer Lingus plays classical music when you’re boarding the plane. The kind of people you tend to avoid in the UK anyways.
And then some people still wonder why British tourists are still called “hooligans” (among other things) by Spaniards…
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I actually agreed, the choice of classical music was a poor selection upon arrival. They should have gone with something a little less tense. It made me feel eager to get going which I guess is what they were aiming for…..
Those are my fellow co-travelers every time I go to see my family. Yay! (sigh).
