A plane is a plane

From AP-

SINGAPORE - Singapore Airlines, the first carrier in the world to fly the new Airbus A380, will auction all seats on its inaugural flight on eBay, and donate the proceeds to charities, the airline said Wednesday.

The history-making return flight to Sydney on the double-decker jumbo jet will take place in October, Singapore Airlines said in a statement. The actual date of the flight will be fixed soon, after final notification from Airbus about the delivery date, the statement said. "In response to requests from people all over the world to be passengers on the first flight, Singapore Airlines will auction the seats on global online marketplace, eBay," the statement said. The auction will begin some weeks before the flight, it said without elaborating.

Even if I could afford it, I wouldn't pay extra to be part of airplane history. The A-380 has been much hyped, but at the same time had production problems. In the end airline customers and airlines themselves will give the plane a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Dear Wife and I once had the pleasure of flying Singapore Airlines. We flew round-trip from Manila to Singapore in 1998. We were celebrating our 10th wedding anniversary.

SIA lived up to its reputation as the #1 airline in the world. The service was incredible, from the red carpet for 1st class passengers(The wife and I were flying business and paid like $400 a piece extra to fly 1st), to the excellent food served on board(You wanted more!) to the priority baggage for 1st and business class passengers. Your bags were first off the plane. I enjoyed my time with Northwest, but priority baggage tags too often meant last off the plane or when the wife traveled to Poland, meant left behind in Amsterdam.

From 1997 to 2001 I was a Gold or Platinum Frequent flyer with Northwest Airlines. I flew on everything from thirty year old DC 9s and 727s to modern 747's.(An oddity about Northwest. They had no 737s, the most common commercial aircraft in the world, in their fleet. I don't know if thats still true. Sometimes I flew Continental who had a codeshare agreement with NW, and in doing so flew on board a 737.) Most of the time in Business or First Class because of my FF status.(or mileage upgrades from the many miles I accumulated) The big planes are nice to fly on, I always did prefer NW's DC 10 service to LAX when travelling to Los Angeles. Then much of that was due to my always getting first class upgrades. With more Frequent flyers than there are 1st class seats, upgrades were far from automatic for me on other planes flying between Northwest's hubs and LAX.

Bottom line- The type of plane rarely matters to the average airline passenger going from Point A to Point B.

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