30th June 2009: Still somewhere between Hong Kong and Helsinki

Bored as I am without any battery in my camera I have arranged a little competition between today’s airlines. Ten extremely relevant categories have been carefully selected and the performance of the two airlines has been evaluated in a…scientific way. Sort of.

Food
Winner: Finnair
Well I’m not at all culturally biased here but any airline serving crumble pie with vanilla cream and cinnamon buns will get my vote. I felt back in Sweden already somewhere over China. The best Asian food ever!

Serving…material
Winner: Finnair
Scandinavian design, what more is there to say? The striped Ittala dinner set makes me feel at home. I just love it!

Movie selection
Winner: Cathay Pacific
Although I did not really see that many movies since I slept most of the SYD-HKG flight I must give this one to Cathay. There were quite a few that I would have liked to see. (Finnair only show films about women in their forties having relationships with teenage boys.) However, due to Cathay’s poorly planned flying (we arrived half an hour early) I did not manage to see the ending of the movie… Minus for that!

Snacks
Winner: Finnair
They gave me Fazer Salmiak pastilles! That is the closest to salty sweets I have been in a year, almost. (Which actually says a lot about my terrible situation since they are not really salty at all. But at least they are black. And salmiaky.)

Size of TV
Winner: Cathay Pacific
Well, it was just bigger. And closer.

Jet Engines
Winner: Finnair
They are blue. What more can I say...

Chairs
Winner: Qantas
(Eau, here Qantas entered the competition as a Joker. Who would have thought that?)
In addition to the fact that the Finnair business chairs cannot be folded down all the way there just isn’t any star trek feeling at all to the Finnair chairs. With Qantas’ egg-formed sky chairs you can at least imagine that you are on a journey to some far away planet, but with Finnair it is pretty clear that you will not leave Mother Earth. Those chairs simply would not handle the journey through the stratosphere.
Cathay has small individual cubicles heading sort of sideways. Very confusing not sitting in the direction the plane flies, at least at start and landing. I cannot really make up my mind about them. If the plane would crash it is however good to know that there is an airbag on the side facing forward. I felt extremely safe.

Travel kit
Winner: Finnair
The black case was esthetical yet functionally designed with an inside hanger. And inside – lingonberry products! (And I have lived my life up to now not even knowing of their existence!) As well as shoehorn and a protective bag for my new camera (How could they know? They are so good…)

Language
Winner: Finnair
Finlandssvenska (Finnish Swedish). Just sounds wonderfully funny.

Flight crew rostering system
Winner: Finnair
Well, it was me designing it a long time ago. Call me partial, but it just must be better.

Seems to me that Finnair won the first round. We'll see if Cathay gets a rematch on the way back...