That was my experience - and I would say more like 20 years than 10. And on the Brisbane to KL route in February I was aboard a similarly-aged A330 which lacked personal seatback IFE. Hadn't seen that on a long-haul flight for years.

They are now sending brand new A330s to many Aus locations...including BNE I think. They have decent seatback PTVs.

Just booked a one-way KUL - MEL so will try it out in March...I've only done the shortest of short hauls on MH before, KUL-SIN.

Having once seen the utter shite that gets served as 'childrens meals' we make damn sure that we DONT get given them despite having kids with us.

The last thing a child on a long haul flight needs is a tray full of sugar'ed rubbish, so when we did ONCE get a childrens meal our daughter ended up eating half our meals instead 'cos we had to confiscate 90% of what was on her tray!

Plenty of people dont want kids meals - so its quite right (in my opinion) for an airline to not make the assumption.

We flew when we emigrated over here with Singapore airlines, both children who were aged 3 and 5 years old picked up some kind of bug half way through the flight and they both spent most of the trip vomiting, the staff couldn't have been more helpful and kind. The children continued to vomit in my brothers car when he picked us up from the sirport, he wasn't so thrilled about it

Everytime we fly longhaul we fly where possible with Singapore airlines.

Emirates have gone downhill.

We all hear of people getting upgrades, but my dad was downgraded the other day and was offered nothing as compensation. I searched the Frequernt Flyer forums and I can't come across that ever happening - a downgrade with no sweetner.

Paid for ticket or frequent flyer award?

From where to where?

Never heard of that hapening on a paid for flight. Have heard of it where ff points were used to pay for the flight but then points are normally given back.

I can chose which airline i fly with and sometimes have to use another carrier if i have a meeting on route at a stopover, but otherwise always chose Emirates even though its actually a slightly longer flight than one of the others - South African. I avoid my bags going through Jo'burg at all cost. Contantly thieved from.

Though last time was funny. They stole a pair of work jeans (think old tattered with holes in them) and 1 thong.

You should try flying with QANTAS then. They're much better - I've only had good experience with them.

All airlines are like that though, even Singapore Airlines - who for some reason have replaced their A380 services to Melbourne with an archaic 747, an unretrofitted 777 and a normal 777-300. The 747 I flew up in last night had seats that I have not seen for at least 10 years, just horrible.

Thai airlines used to fly (may still do) old 747s between Bangkok & Heathrow with no IFE, yet fly from Paris/Frankfurt etc and those flights were on brand new 777s or A340s with brilliant IFE.

Worst flight in the world had to be one i did from LHR to Santiago Chile with Iberia. The flight from Madrid which was about 14 hours had zero entertainment. Not even an in flight magazine, seats that would not recline and the food consisted of a bowl of pasta with nothing on it. Werent even served coffee. Just water.

I swore that if any company booked me on an iberia flight again i would resign on the spot and still mean it after 10 years

Yup agreed - SQ are not being nice to Melbourne at the moment!

Thai has been fitting IFE in the 747 economy for a while now and London is scheduled to get the refurbed planes...although LHR is actually being operated by the A340 for a couple of months over winter. Their schedule is a bit screwed up at the moment as maintenance ops were scuppered by the flooding at the old airport...so there are still a few IFE less planes going around.

Now that's an airline that gets consistently awful reviews!!

Paid flight from Perth to Dubai. Put on an older 2 class plane so dad was told he was flying business (no big deal) but offered no refund/free ticket/points etc... apparently it was because his 1st class ticket was a special offer. Big deal, it would not have been handled like that by Singapore Airlines.

He rescheduled to fly the next day where there was a 3 class plane.

Seems odd but I'm guessing maybe there was no fare difference to calculate compo? Still, not a sensible way to treat a downgraded F pax! I reckon if he had taken the downgrade you could have extracted compo later.

Maybe, to me it was evidence of an airline in decline with poor customer service.