Andy Cunningham

In the first tale, despite a 90 minute delay I get a complimentary hot meal, whisked across the airport to make the connection, and generally made to feel like I was welcome on board.

In the second tale, I hand over my passport with the boarding card in the photo page.  The stroppy cow on the gate pulls out the boarding card, and gives the passport back to me and asks me to open it at the photo page because “it’s quicker for her”, then yells at the rest of the queue to open their passports to the photo page.  I point out that I’d left the boarding card in the right place, but this was obviously too much effort for her.  The same airline proceeds to charge me for a cup of mediocre coffee in a penny pinching exercise that would have warmed what little heart Ebeneezer Scrooge had.

Now, one of these airlines was Kingfisher Airlines, a new airline in India that knows how to look after their customers.  The other was Aer Lingus, a sad and sorry excuse for an airline whose raison d’etre seems to be to compete with Ryan Air on the grounds of poor service and customer abuse, and who I only fly with because there isn’t really an alternative and if I could get the ferry to Ireland in future, I would.

Can you guess which is which?