French Amsterdam: A350 THAI BKK-BRU and grandma on the cupboard

You still had the return flight from my previous trip to look forward to, so I might as well start with that. There was a change of gate, to 2A if I remember correctly. The advantage of that is that you sit right near the smoking area. The disadvantage is that it isn't a full-fledged gate, but more of a bus stop to take you to the plane parked elsewhere. No big deal, although I can imagine, especially if you were traveling business class, that you wouldn't enjoy having to stand in a bus like that.

After starting the A350's engines, a distinct smell of kerosene was unmistakably noticeable in the cabin. That is quite nice every now and then, and after a few deep breaths, I already felt like I was in heaven while we were still taxiing.

In Brussels the weather was fine and the approach went smoothly, so the surprise was all the greater when we landed on the runway with a truly enormous crash. The three babies, who hadn't made a sound during the flight, burst into a deafening scream all at once, and rightly so.

On my small screen, I followed the image from the camera mounted in the tail of the aircraft, and the moment we touched the ground, it looked as if the landing gear tires exploded. Flames shot off them. Not exactly smooth and silky. It wasn't clear what the purpose of this crash had been, and as long as the thing doesn't break into pieces, no one asks any further questions. You are simply thanked in four languages ​​for traveling with Thai Airways, for the trust you have placed in the airline, and that's it.

I recently flew to BKK again. I’ve gotten used to the petroleum smell after starting the engines by now (do other planes have that too? Is it just something I notice here?), but the biggest annoyance was a fellow passenger from the south who took a sip from his 1.5-liter PET bottle of Spa Blue every fifteen minutes during the night. That made more noise each time than opening a bag of chips in a cinema, especially when he was squeezing the bottle back into the net on the back of the seat in front of him. He had an aisle seat, and only when he tilted so much several times that it blocked the cabin crew's passage did it become apparent that there was something other than Spa Blue in the bottle.

By now the young man was in such a pitiful condition that one felt sorry for him rather than it seemed useful to address him in admonition. One of the stewards tried that, without success. It didn't get through at all.
Furthermore, a few minor details: the information about the meals in the entertainment system, which was incorrect last time, was now 'unavailable'. That's better, but still not right. A source of annoyance remains the absence of the previously standard sachet of salt and pepper with the meals, especially with the omelet breakfast. You have to ask for it, and then they don't have them with them and you have to wait again, and I absolutely hate that.

I still maintain that all this fuss about new aircraft models is pretty uninteresting to the average traveler. The interior looks spic & span on a new aircraft, that is, and the completely indirect lighting deserves praise.
Furthermore, the experience has been more or less the same for decades. Actually since the pressurized cabin came into vogue, in combination with the jet engines, which made flying at great heights, 'above the weather', possible, and flying itself became a kind of 'non event'. Again, for now I don't foresee any substantial changes. Or you have to become lyrical about a packing app from KLM and more of that kind of nonsense.

I can still remember a real innovation from my childhood. That was the slides at the emergency exits. The new pinnacle of safety engineering ingenuity at the time. My grandmother's neighbor (who was also a kind of grandmother to me, and I was allowed to call her that) had, I believe, thirteen children and fifty-three grandchildren. Forty-four including me. A number of her children had emigrated to Canada. Occasionally one would come 'over', as it was called, but when Grandma turned seventy-five, they had invited her to come to Canada. That was quite something in those days. One Wednesday afternoon, I went with my mother to this grandmother's house to drink hot chocolate – I usually got a chocolate wafer with it – to wish her a good journey; Facebook didn't exist yet.

With great pride, she showed me her ticket and the other travel documents, which I naturally wanted to study from A to Z. There was also an instruction sheet included on how to use the slides during an emergency landing. I could picture it perfectly: Grandma on one of those slides. I asked Grandma what she would think of that. Well, she hadn't really thought about that yet. She really should, I thought. My mother tried to smooth things over and said that the chance of an accident was very small. I didn't let myself be discouraged and said that they were going to practice with those slides at Schiphol at least once before the flight. Grandma turned pale, and according to my mother, I was a rascal. But I had certainly gotten on Grandma's nerves.