Jetting Around

One nice thing was that since I was flying through Hong Kong I had my choice of airlines, which meant I didn't have to fly on an America airline, or a Chinese one for that matter. Cathay Pacific is one of those more and more rare airlines where the service is still good and the seats comfortable. They had a couple of neat things I hadn't seen before in the economy section of a plane. First every seat had a power jack, though my laptop is way to big to use on a plane since the screen wouldn't be able to open all the way. They also had a really good selection of shows and movies on the little seat back TV. One interesting thing is that the seats didn't really lean back. Instead what happened was that your seat just sot of slid forward if you pushed a button putting you in a more vertical position. It worked great for me but I wonder if it cuts some f the leg room for really tall people. The best part though was that you never end up with someone else's head in your lap. Also for the first time ever the little pillow on the back of the seat, for when you lean your head back, was actually comfortable, something I thought was impossible. Of course for every two steps forward airlines have to take one step back so there were a few inexplicably annoying things. First The head phone jack wasn't the standard kind so I could only use the crappy headphones they gave me, not the much better ones I had brought, there is simply no reason for this. More annoying was this was one of the new planes with the seat belt airbags, pictured here. It's not a bad idea I guess but the design of it takes away some of the valuable inches from the width of the seat due to its balky and inflexible nature. I'm not against airbags but they could put them in the back of the seat in front of you, more like a car. Also if the plan goes down an airbag isn't really going to help unless its also a parachute.