49) Don’t want to blown up on a plane? How unreasonable can you be?

London, Nov 6th 2015.

As you may have noticed in the news, a passenger plane travelling over the Ukraine was blown out of the sky not that long ago, its demise generally believed to have been the result of a missile being fired at it by one of the combatants in the civil war being waged on the ground below. And, unless you have been completely comatose for the last few days or are a world war II Japanese soldier who until this very moment was still hiding out in the Borneo jungle, you will have caught wind of the fact that last week a Russian passenger plane flying over Sinai in Egypt exploded in mid–air, as a result, it is now widely believed, of  a bomb being placed on it by Isil terrorists operating in that area. You may even have heard that there is a nasty civil war going on in Syria and there is serious bother in Iraq and Yemen too.

I mention these  bits  of non-news because I am about to confirm flights for a pal and myself to and from Bangkok in February and it has crossed my mind that I would prefer not to be blown up by a terrorist. (I don’t think Sue, my pal, would be too keen either.) The booking to Bangkok – the jumping off point for a trip around the northern bit of south east Asia  - is being made through Trailfinders  and they have made provisional reservations on EVA Airways, a Taiwanese airline of which I had not previously heard. I checked them out on-line and found very good reports of their service and that they rank fifth in the world in terms of safety – BA, by the way are below them in sixth place. (www.jacdec.de/airline-safety-ranking-2015/)

However, being the kind of unreasonably  neurotic traveller who wants to live, I called Trailfinders to ask what the EVA flight-paths would be, specifically asking for assurances that  they do not fly over the Ukraine and Sinai. (Yes, I know it wasn’t a missile that brought the Russian plane down and that it is said that Isil do not have missiles capable of reaching the cruising height of an airliner but do you think it is impossible that they could get hold of such weapons and would you put it past them to use them if they could? ) Actually, being a belt and braces kind of a guy I think I would much prefer it if my plane missed Syria, Iraq and  Yemen too.

Ian, the very decent and willing Trailfinders chap who made my booking had the day off, so I had to speak to someone else. Or, to be more accurate, to three people.  And I didn’t get anywhere with any of them.

Frankly, I thought the response to my call was quite astonishing. And not in a good way. But then again maybe it was me. Perhaps they were being eminently reasonable and silly old, rather-be-alive-than-blown-into-a-million-pieces me was the one who was out of line.

I won’t go into all the boring details but here is an approximate synopsis.

No.1 Trailfinders person didn’t know what the answer was, said she would call me back but by  two hours later still hadn’t.

No.2 seemed not to understand the question  and when I finally succeded in explaining what I meant by the word ‘route’, claimed she had never been asked such a question before.

“What?” I expostulated – admittedly I can get to the expostulation stage quite quickly – “even after MH17 went down over Ukraine, no-one ever asked you about the flight path  of a plane they were about to take?”

Apparently not.

So I moved on to no.3, a manager this time, but one who was equally unable to provide me with any kind of reassurance, and seemed to regard my question as just as freakish as no.2 had. (They record all telephone calls and if you ever got to listen, you would, I think, find, that I am not in in any way exaggerating.)

She was able to say that Trailfinders never used airlines that didn’t conform to Civil Aviation Authority and international directives but was unable to tell me what exactly those  directives are.  She also pointed out that the flights changed every day, so I, completely understanding that terrorists don’t always publish schedules of their prospective atrocities in advance, amended my question to simply asking what the position was as of today.

Unfortunately she was unable to tell me even this, saying that they didn’t have that kind of information and, after apparently checking on her computer, further told me that  it wasn’t available on the EVA website and that I should check with EVA direct. Since  I was  about to make a biggish booking through Trailfinders - biggish for me anyway –  I suggested that she might like to call them  on my behalf, but no, that clearly wasn’t going to happen.

So I rang EVA myself . The first person I spoke to  tried to help but said that they didn’t have the information (at wherever she was based) and that she would call the EVA base  at Heathrow to find out. Half an hour later she called back advising me to look at a website that tracks the flights of all planes in the air, but neither she nor I could find a way to get the website to provide me with any useful information, so she suggested I call EVA at the airport and gave me the number so to do.  This time someone called Debbie answered. I went through my story again, and she said the only way she could give me an answer would be to e-mail head office in Taipei and then report back by tomorrow.

And that is how it stands at the moment.

Five people representing two biggish organisations asked, and, to date,  no answer obtained.

I had thought that Trailfinders were being somewhat insensitive/unhelpful/amateurish – take your pick – but in all honesty, EVA don’t seem to be that much more on the ball.

So maybe it is me. Maybe enquiring about whether  an airline I’ve never heard of might be savvy enough to avoid flying over places where deranged lunatics are fighting wars and have, on at least one occasion, knocked a plane out of the sky, was totally unreasonable, and so far out of left field that no travel agent or airline could possibly be expected to have an answer readily available.

Bloody clients. Who needs them?

Update: London November 7th 2015

Not a word from EVA, so I called my original guy at Trailfinders who was back in today  and asked whether we could switch the flights to BA. He said that we could but for an extra £70 a ticket. I chewed on this. Didn’t seem a lot to pay for the extra peace of mind but £70 is £70. Then, while I chewed, he suddenly announced  he could see a way by which, with a bit of artful travel-agent trickery, he could switch us to BA, get us flying back from Singapore which would apparently work better and save £150 a ticket. No brainer as they say.

So now we are not going by EVA and they have no-one to blame but themseves. That said, they are, as I mentioned earlier, ranked above BA on the airline safety table and I guarantee the food would be better, the legroom greater, and the TV screen bigger.

And you might argue that a BA plane would be a juicier target for terrorists than a Taiwanese plane. So I can’t say that I am a 100% convinced that I have done the right thing. 

But then again, when was I ever?