I’m back, slightly jet-lagged but ready for action. Sooty, the weather-forecasting puppet bear, was right and it did indeed chuck it down something chronic while I was there. Thank you, Sooty. And if you’re ever thinking of going to Raleigh, North Carolina, the main/only attraction is the Angus Barn, BTW.
Since this ‘ere blog is The Medium is Not Enough, I’d probably be letting the side down if I didn’t review the in-flight entertainment system.
I flew American Airlines to Raleigh-Durham, something I haven’t done in quite a while, and the entertainment system has at least improved since the last time I used their services.
But we’re still not talking great, here. A choice of two or three movies for an eight-hour flight? Okay, but could you make sure that more than one channel actually works? The result was I could watch Talladega Nights on the way over and You, Me and Dupree on the way back. I didn’t.
The movies were augmented by various music channels and… ooh, some tele. Now we’re talking, right?
Still no. There was one channel of British television. On the way over, that offered Miss Marple: A Caribbean Mystery, a 1989 TV movie starring Joan Hickson; on the way back, we got Cracker: Nine Eleven. Since that’s been growing fondly in my memory since I reviewed it, I watched it again and was most pleased. I did not watch Miss Marple again.
Unsurprisingly, most of the TV was instead from the US. More surprisingly, it was all from CBS, thanks to some deal with American Airlines. So, with a trapped audience, what did CBS throw at us? Did they put their best foot forward?
Of course they didn’t. The main channel showed “CBS on American”, a puff channel hosted by Dennis Haysbert that was full of adverts for CBS programmes, and not very good episodes of 60 Minutes and How I Met Your Mother. The other channel had CSI: New York. I can’t think of better ways to put people off watching CBS.
So, I, a devout lover of US television and movies, read books for almost the whole flight there and watched a British television programme on the way back. How upsetting.
My current hierarchy of in-flight entertainment systems to the US is thus:
- Virgin Atlantic: still the best, since it has loads of movies, dedicated TV channels, etc. Doesn’t have any US television on it, as far as I recall. It’s been a year since my last trip with Virgin, so my memory may be fading on that score. First Class is better, but not so good it’s worth upgrading…
- Continental: a Virgin Atlantic partner, it has more or less the same in-flight system but foregoes British programming in favour of US programming. Not very good programming, mind, but c’est la vie.
- American Airlines: an okay attempt, but not great as you can probably tell. Word of extra advice: bring your own headphones, since the ones they supply are awful quality and only the left earbud seems to work
- Air France: I can’t even remember there being a system, and the stewards forced you to speak French to them (not too hard in the scheme of things – “cafe au lait, s’il vous plaît” being all you really need – but I was coming from San Francisco, FFS). I was just glad the plane’s undercarriage had all the right parts, unlike the connecting flight I’d been on. And at least they’re not Delta.
- Delta: America’s least favourite airline. Times may have changed since my unilateral boycott went into effect in the late 90s, but their self-assembly hamburgers annoyed me and they only showed one movie, it was on a projector screen, it was made-for-TV gunk about a submarine, and you had to buy headphones to listen to it.
