Scribbles

As I said before, there was no set plan what I wanted to do during this sabbatical. One thing I did think off was to write a novel. A love story partially set in Africa.
I wrote the first twenty pages in the Caribbean but never completed it. Oh, and I wrote the ending too.
I don’t have a plot. Not written anyway. It is all in my head. That, and the title. Here are the first lines:

At last the sun rose, in a veil of pink, orange and red, bright, and vivid. The clouds forming a low mist ring around the hills, tried to hold on as long as they could, sheltering the valleys from the warm sun to come. Wrinkles of smoke coming from some huts and villages in-between the hills mixed with the mist, creating the unique intense smell of humid wood fire –almost sandalwood – he always linked to this place. The leaves from the banana trees, the palms, the mango trees in the garden would be dripping of dew by now..
The mango tree. ‘The big one’, she called the one in the corner of the garden in his house. ‘You know, Jack, the big one, is one of the reasons why I always come here, to your house’, she once said laying with her head on his chest on the deck chairs on the terrace, ‘Him and you.. The big one always gives me shade when I want to sit here on your terrace, and you… you… give me everything else.. almost..’ Her mouth had curled into her typical mysterious smile.. Sometimes she was so difficult to follow, to understand, to grasp. Spoke in a symbolic language one moment, and was so direct in her remarks and questions at other times that it hurt. Jack remembered that moment. He had kissed her forehead and stroke her hair. The moment, that weekend had been perfect, and there were no needs for words.

The sun climbed fast, and he got out of the vehicle, looking at the sky.. ‘Where were they?’ Wagonga, from the air control tower, called him on his walkietalkie. ‘Jack, channel 14, HF’. He jumped back in the car, switched on the shortwave radio, and tuned the antenna. The background noise disappeared and he heard clearly ‘Roger Entebbe Control, runway 14, approaching and switching to VHF 118.2. United Nations UK95 out’. Good old Sam’s voice… He did not see the twin engine plane yet, but he knew which direction it would come from, and tried to focus his sight on the horizon. Once again both Jack and Sam were connected to her. Both of them had, without hesitation, taken control of the situation and done what needed to be done. ‘Lisa, my god, Lisa.’ He looked over Lake Victoria at the end of the runway, trying to spot the approaching plane, and imagined how the fishermen must be making their way for their daily catch of Nile Perch, the local delicatessen, and then tie the fish over the back of their bicycle and ride them to the market later today.
The Beechcraft plane had switched on its bright white landing lights, and for a while this was the only thing he could see, those lights, as it approached. Sam made a perfect landing, idled the pitch of the propellers and turned onto the tarmac in front of the airport building, coming to a standstill fifty meters from Jack’s car and the Red Cross plane next to it.

For a moment, there was no more Entebbe airport, no more people rushing about, getting the Red Cross plane ready. No more friends and colleagues standing around him, no more doctor and nurse walking to Sam’s plane. He just focused on the door of the plane. It swept open, and Sam, good old Sam, pulled the stairs out, and started to give orders to the ground crew. Sam came up to him: ‘Jack, come with me.’ and snapped him out of his daydreaming. No more shouting now, but a soft, considerate, determined voice. ‘Jack, she came to conscience just for a minute during the ride. She called for you. Go with her, you have my blessing. Take care of her, she is in a bad shape.’. As he turned away his head, not to show his tears, his voice broke ‘Please take good care of her, she is now in your hands. Yours and God’s.’

Jack’s mechanical and practical mind took over, as he walked to the stairs of Jack’s plane. He instructed the handling crew to take her stretcher slowly and horizontally. The nurse held the plastic bag of serum up, and slowly they moved her to the waiting plane. Before he knew it, the engines started up, and he was sitting next to her.
‘Lisa, Lisa’, was all what his heart said, whispered, shouted, cried. It was weird, she did not look different from the last time he saw her, about two weeks ago, when she left for her usual one month tour of duty in Gulu, about one hours flight north of here. A normal goodbye, a hug, a kiss, a ‘be careful’. But he forgot in this line of work, each goodbye might mean two people might never see each other again. ‘How much we all had taken life for granted. Did I really enjoy every single moment I shared with her? To the fullest? It might have all been past now, with no more future. Never a word again from her, not a glance, not a touch, not a breath’, he thought, as he touched her hand and moved a brush of her long black hair way from her face. Her face felt hot, but it looked like she was sleeping, in a soft deep sleep, resting. The doctor lifted the white sheet covering Lisa, and only then Jack saw the wound in her side, and the blood on the sheet. The deep cut from the machete.

Maybe for the next sabbatical?

Well, the first thing Brussels Airlines did, was to piss off the aircrew by implementing new work schedules without consulting the crew. So the first days, they did several actions, barely avoiding a strike. Now they threaten to actually go on strike. I think there is one coming in the next days. So hey, it seems things did not get much better!

So what did my first hand expert testing of the new airline come up with?Well, I did not want to test the quality of Brussels Airlines.. (imagine a small high pitched voice with corner of the lips curled down and a real real sad face). I merely wanted to book a ticket with my frequent traveler miles!! Boohoo… And I couldn’t Boohhoooo… (hand me a hanky!).

Booking using miles was a breeze at the time of SN, but boy, on the new Privilege website (the frequent flyer program of SN, now Brussels), it seemed EITHER they hid the booking feature real well, or it was not possible anymore to book flight online with miles…

No problem, I thought, I will call them. The number I found on the web was a paying number (charging 0.75 euro per minute), but they also gave a Belgian non-paying number to dial from abroad. I tried that one, and after two minutes of answering multiple choices (questions and options posed by a lady who sounded they were holding a gun to her head or had taken her children hostage), I was put on hold. And on hold. And on hold… Encouraged to remain on line as “I was to be attended to real soon now!” I gave up after 30 minutes. I tried again, and same thing. (I guess those 60 minutes on the paying number would have cost me 45 Euro, about a third of the price for a ticket.. Ah.. this is how they try to reduce the prices of the tickets! (I wish!)

I tried to find other numbers to book with miles via the phone. No go. Old numbers did not work anymore neither..

Hmm.. ok, I thought, I will book a paid ticket then. I went back online. They have a new webpage since the merger.. I booked destination, date, got the price and got… stuck… No way to go onto the last page to pay for the ticket. “OK”, I thought, “Bad luck, let’s try again!”. But same thing. And again…

So… I tried the normal booking telephone number… Got through in a few seconds, no questions asked, and the guy booked me a ticket in two minutes. Paid of course.

Oh, and the price was EUR152.99, about 30-50% more than what I used to pay with either Virgin or SN !

So I wrote them an email (Customer.Relations(at)brusselsairlines.com and Privilege(at)brusselsairlines.com ) stating how un-impressed I was. Giving my phone number, and stating I was going to publish my opinion and their answer on the Net.

I am still waiting for their answer.

At this point, my impression is: SN Brussels and Virgin Express? They ‘d better had an abortion than giving birth to Brussels Airlines… Now we have one Virgin less in the world and one more average airline…

Update:
I write this just as I got off the plane. Despite my rumbling on the problems to book a ticket, the actual check-in was a breeze, as it always was. Despite the fact I booked a low-fare ticket, they did not mind my luggage was 8 kg overweight, and that I had two pieces of hand luggage (each more than 6 kg) rather than the allowed one piece.
So maybe, just maybe, we’re in for a good thing… Some babies are a pain as newborns, but grow up to be loveable individuals… Maybe also so with Brussels Airlines?

That is Sabena. Not Sabrena, Sabine, or Sabrina! We’re talking about our ex-national carrier. A customer-company platonic love affair! If you are looking for sexual inspired stories, you won’t find it here! Or should I tell them about he Mile-High club?

Anyway, just a few months ago, SN Brussels Airlines and Virgin Express merged into Brussels Airlines. I was a regular customer of both “parent” companies, so when flying to Rome I was curious to experience first hand the excitement of the new merged airline.
I used to be a regular customer of SABENA, the Belgian national carrier. Back in the eighties and early nineties, they were a shabby airline, deserving their nickname “Such A Bloody Experience Never Again”. Back then, Brussels national airport was a dump, a national shame. Run down, inefficient, unattractive. It was the only airport I knew then, where you had to pay with a coin (then still Belgian Francs), to get a luggage cart in arrivals. Would the international traveler arriving in Brussels, with a Bef 20 coin in their pocket please raise their hand? Right. So most people had to drag their luggage out of arrivals. Pathetic, it was.

Mid nineties, it all started to change. Sabena expanded their network, renewed its fleet of aircraft, and had an overhaul of its staff. Actually it became a pleasure flying with them. And I flew Sabena a lot, as they had loads of African destinations.
Brussels Airport did not get a facelift, no, it went further than that. They amputated the departure halls, then the arrivals hall and cut off one of the oldest departure/arrival wings, all to be replaced by brand new state-of-the-art buildings.

After flirting with SAS, courting KLM, seducing British Airways and winking at Air France for a while – the latter relationship being blocked by the EU – Sabena decided to partner up with Swiss Air in 1995. And Swiss Air spoiled it all. They literally sucked up all liquidity and valuable assets, and run off with it, declaring bankruptcy themselves right after 9/11 (a handy excuse, 9/11 was!). They left behind a sad-faced Sabena management who could not have been too clever having Swiss Air get away with all the sucking! The souvenir of the short lived partnership was a huge debt and a flabbergasted Belgian Government (who was then a part owner of the national carrier).. They are still fighting as to determine who mismanaged Sabena. They went bankrupt also. Sabena that is. The Belgian state was bankrupt already a long time ago.

Gone was the holy shrine of the jet-era flashy status of being a pilot or air attendant. They all joined the long queue at the employment office. Left was just.. a shrine.. And a massively under-utilized brand new national airport. Oh, and thousands of stranded passengers of course… “Sorry, we can not fly you back to Belgium, madam as ‘We’ don’t exist anymore!”
It took “Swiss Air” only weeks to get reborn into “Swiss” – no wonder with all the cash and assets they ran off with from Sabena. But the Belgian carrier is still picking up the pieces today.

First reborn into SN Brussels Airlines (who invents these names? People actually get paid to come up with a name like “SN” Brussels Airlines?), as a small regional carrier, slowly expanding their network. They were still a pleasure to fly. And the left-over air staff from Sabena, still showed a pride.

Virgin Express was born in 1996, using Brussels as a regional hub, servicing several destinations in Europe. They were to be a low cost carrier, but after a few years they became just as expensive as SN. Minus leg room (you wanted to bring your legs aboard, you had to pay extra..), minus food, minus drinks, minus the frequent travel scheme and often minus the smiles too. Plus the attitude, often.

It is a mystery to me why SN wanted to merge with Virgin and create Brussels Airlines… Just as it was a mystery to me who invented their TV publicity spot announcing the merger (people actually get paid for stuff like this?). The spot showed (tricked of course) two aircraft (one Virgin 737 and an SN Avro Jet), courting in the sky, flying loops and upside down stunts together (rather a scary sight to see a 737 passenger jet fly loops and upside downs, I am sure there is a law against that, but hey it’s TV!…), to clearly show how much in love the two planes and the two parent companies were.
Result of the courtship was a rather distasteful televised birth of a small plane (including all the slime, blood etc..) pressed out of the back of a Virgin Express 737 (clearly in the female role!), and.. taraaaaaa, the small plane had the logo of Brussels Airlines. How inventive, those TV commercials people! Oh wow!

So I guess Virgin Express was no longer a Virgin anymore. They stopped being ‘Express’ a long time before the merger… Mr. Branson probably said ‘Thank you’, took the money and ran, to buy another island in the Caribbean (actually quite a nice one, we anchored right beside it last summer!) leaving all of us mortals to wonder what the merger would do..

And what did the merger bring? Read about it tomorrow in “SN plus Virgin equals abortion?”