The one airline that I have never flown is Ad Airwavs. It is out there somewhere but I never get that flight. Having just completed I4 flights in I5 days I am very disappointed that this highly publicized airline is so difficult to find. It certainly does not fly out of airports I frequent.
This is the airline created by advertising agencies and they use it in all their campaigns. On Ad Airlines air hostesses waft on silken cushions and have ethereal smiles as they wander about this soft focus cabin, gently covering supine passengers with blankets and laying cool hands on fevered brows, kneeling with liquid grace as they serve food and drink like it was their life’s mission and had to be done with electrified zeal. Even when they speak to you it is like those sylphlike sirens luring Ullysses.
Two days ago asked an airhostess on a standard airline to tuck me in with a blanket with an option on the celestial music generally heard on AdAir and she threatened to call the Captain. As for the fevered brow stuff she said, look, you want cool hands go to Flo Nightingale, you want water, wait till the flight takes off, now fix your seatbelt, sorry, we don’ t allow bags under the seat, put it away, up there in the overhead locker and put your seat upright.
On AdAir people blend into their wonderful sculpted seats, cupped and cuddled by the huge stretch of space given to each pax even in Economy and that enables the traveler to relax with beatific smile on beatific face as he sIumbers in beatific repose.
On other airlines you twist and turn and stick foot into footrest for balance and scrunch up and clutch at pillow and toss and twist a little more and only five minutes have passed as you slide down the seat for the fourth time and wish you had been born eighteen inches shorter as you remove fellow passenger’s knee from your air space.
AdAirways is big on fine dining. Everybody on this airline eats with grace and dignity and the food makes a Roman feast look like a Salvation Army soup kitchen. Pictures of passengers eating are always misty and romantic and have that special ambience about them. You can hear the violins and the cherubs frolicking as you imbibe (as compared to eat.) In other airlines they fling the food across I7 C and I7D at you in I7 F wrapped in cellophane covers that need Hercules on a good day to rip apart. You sit all squeegeed up enclosed by the tray table and your arms are locked in at the elbow and tearing cellophane or lifting flaps where it says ‘lift here’ now becomes a superhuman task. After several shots at it and a final poke with the fork when next door partner isn’t looking, you find dinner is brown goo, some green goo, some light pink goo and a semi solid reddish crimson goo onto which you are supposed to pour ketchup and mustard from plastic packets that are human-resistant and you surrender by splashing various colored goos around the vicinity. Not just that but the main splash will always be nor’ nor’ west of your napkin right onto your white shirt and since you are confined to a space of I8 inches by I6 inches any effort to clean it will result in either glass of water spilling or green goo dropping or your elbow striking fellow passenger’s cashew nuts (salted) and sending them spinning.
Also, unlike on AdAir, bread made for normal airlines is baked by sticking together crumbs with insta-destruct glue. The moment you break the bread it disintegrates into its original crumb form, like a grenade and you have crumbs everywhere, especially on your coat.
On AdAirways all passengers are good looking and built to walk the ramp. The women are svelte (so, go look up the meaning, this is not an English lesson) and the men debonair and dashing and their clothes never wrinkle. They step off the plane after II hours of flying like they had stepped out of the shower. Their suits are pristine and pressed and they are shaven and spotlessly fresh. No ladies with lumpy handbags, no grumpy men with bad attitudes, none of the great unwashed fly AD Air.
In normal airlines you look mangled after five hours and positively destroyed after eleven.
You stagger off the plane in a suit that looks like it was shot, your eyes are red, your beard dis-gus-ting and yawns come in series like waves on a beach. And it isn’t Cindy Crawford sitting next to you it is a lady with a three month old baby who likes crying once Every two minutes.
Some of my best friends are in advertising. One day, I am going to ask one of them if they’ll get me a ticket on this airline I can never find.
