Why Gulf Air sucks:
- They let people onboard with crazy amounts of check in baggage.
- They do not stage their boarding by row number, so boarding the flight, and having everyone attempt to fit their gargantuan amounts of luggage in the overhead lockers becomes an absolute disasters.
- The remote control on A’s chair was busted, and had clearly been for some time, given the amount of wear and tear on the faulty buttons compared to other remotes.
- The flight attendants do not respond to pressing the flight attendant button. I don’t mean they wait 10, 30 or even 60 minutes before responding. They don’t respond period.
- When you do happen to catch one heading down the aisle and explain your problem, they listen, say they will do something about it and then never return or fix the problem.
- When you catch them 45 minutes later they say they will try again and then never return or fix the problem.
- When you ask why you can’t swap to 2 of the 3 empty seats in the row behind you they say the woman there has been complaining about a sore back. Am I being unsympathetic in suggesting that a sore back doesn’t need 4 seats on a full flight? Especially considering she was sitting up and only occupying one and a bit chairs. Wouldn’t 2 suffice?
- When you ask another attendant they promise to telex the ground staff at your next stop and arrange a seat change before passengers boarding at that port check-in. This attendant then never returns.
- 5 hours later when you walk down the back of the plane to use the toilets and see that attendant there they claim that they “could not” send the telex, but won’t explain why, especially given they were the ones they suggesting that’s what they could do in the first place.
- They let someone bring 5L of “holy water” onboard and store said beverage in the overhead lockers despite potential damage to electrical equipment.
- Ground staff at the net port whilst cleaning the aircraft smelt said “holy water”, realised it was some form of strong alcohol (and therefore flammable), was unlabelled and confiscated the 5L container.
- Passenger owning said water chucked a massive wobbly midair when he realised this was missing. Had a big argument with the new flight attendants who had taken over the plane at the last port and had no clue what was going on.
- Said passenger decided to stash his massive suitcase (that shouldn’t be allowed onboard in the first place, see point one) in the aisle for the rest of the flight.
- Said passenger was informed by the crew that he was blocking the aisles and the plane cannot land until the aisles are clear.
- Said passenger refused to move it. Lots of shouting ensued.
- Aircrew informed passenger that unless he moved his bag in the next minute he would be arrested on arrival in Sydney and civil action taken against him.
- Said passenger refuses to move his bag. Starts yelling in a mixture of English and Arabic.
- Flight announcement is made that the plane is unable to land until the aisles are clear, so our descend is on hold for now.
- An Arabic attendant has a big loud argument with said passenger in Arabic.
- Other passengers start yelling at said passenger to move his fricken luggage.
- Arabic attendant finally lugs the suitcase back overhead.
Why Gulf Air ain’t so bad:
- Plane finally lands without crashing, only an hour late.
- The food is pretty decent, and the icecream they handed out late at night was awesome.
Awesome though it was, the icecream certainly didn’t make up for the rest of the bollocks.
