Inflight Fancies

My family is based in Cebu, so I have become accustomed to flying back and forth in the past 9 years. Like most frequent flyers, I usually spend the entire flight sleeping or attempting to sleep. In fact, I’ve become really good at it in the past few years.

Over the weekend, I went back to Cebu. I was excited for my flight because I knew I was going to ride PAL’s newest airplane, the B777-300ER.

Some new features of the plane were certainly refreshing for a lot of the passengers. I was particularly happy about the additions in the seat design for the Fiesta class. Each seat had an individualized entertainment system, which was formerly exclusive to the business class. The Panasonic eX2 digital in-flight entertainment system allows both Mabuhay and Fiesta class passengers to watch videos or play games like Sudoku and Bookworm.

I was also amused by the USB port found in each of the seats, which I only discovered much later into the flight. This allows us to listen to our downloaded music, or even view pictures and other files in the monitor. I was also told that laptop charging is also available in each of the Mabuhay class seats. For us humble Fiesta class passengers, we had to go to the rear of the plane.

Perhaps the most entertaining part of the flight was PAL’s new inflight safety video which I saw for the first time. It’s great that they finally replaced the old video that they have been playing since I was a child. This was probably a response to the different gimmicks employed by other airlines to rouse the interest of what would have been otherwise an inattentive group. This new PAL video was both informative and cute. It utilized amazing graphics and an entertaining story line without compromising the need to efficiently relay indispensable information about flight safety. It also made me miss my grandparents even more.

JERIC ALVIN CRUZ (4th blog)