Destination Golf Global Guide (Winter 2018) * | Page 28

Ethiopian Airline Business Class Seats.
Not too long ago
travelling down to the
‘Dark Continent’ used to
be an odyssey in itself
and it certainly was not a
journey to be undertaken
by the faint hearted. My
dear Mother recalls a time
when a flight to West
Africa in the late 1940’s
took her 2 days in an
unpressurised aircraft! weighed the individual passengers at check-in
– ostensibly, I can only imagine, in helping to
balance the load.
Of course that would be in an era before
the taxes and airport fees would first make
their unwelcome presence felt, albeit as a
nominal, at least by current standards, check-
in fee. However it was a time when they Talking of the ‘old ways’, immediately brought
back thoughts of the Union Castle Line mail-
ships that used to cruise up and down Africa’s
west coast on the UK to Cape route. This
happy memory prompted me, at one stage
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Can you imagine this passenger weigh-in
concept working in this modern PC World?!!!
The staff interactions must have been
something to witness – ‘hold on George (a
completely fictitious name) we have got a fat
one here, you’d best be allocating mid-cabin
seating to ensure the best in-flight stability’! For
those of you who have had the experience of
sitting next to an ‘extra-large’ passenger who
spends the entire flight overflowing into your
seating space – it might well feel like it’s time to
bring back some of the old ways!