Vintage flight

Corbett | April 25, 2006 1:45 AM

For our recent flight to Beijing, Brett and I took the shortcut flight up through Jeju Island in Korea. The whole flight is now like 4.5 hrs instead of the whole day horrible affair you go through when connecting through Hong Kong. The Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) plane essentially pulls up next to a China Eastern plane, and you get on a shuttle and sit in the waiting room for about 20 minutes (we watched the Mets clobber the Padres in Korean), then the shuttle takes you back to exactly the same place you came from, and then you get on the plane next door. A pretty funny and simple solution for the Koreans to cash in on the whole dumb three-links issue.

Anyways, it turns out the Brett is a sort of plane freak since he flies so much, and as we board the plane, he's like "Oh my god, this plane is ancient. It's a DC-9. Look how far the back the wings are. They don't make planes like this anymore. The engines in back are so inefficient."

So I start to look around, and the plane does feel a bit dumpy, but living in Taiwan, everything seems kind of worn out, so I don't really think about it.

I tell him, "I took a look at the registration on the door when we boarded. It said this plane was manufactured in 1995." (I have a weird habit of always taking a look at the registration on a plane)

"That's absolute bullshit. Maybe that's when they refurbished this dinosaur. I mean, look at the little window pull down thingies. That's so 1970's."

"Let's go take a second look," I offer. We both jump out of the seat and run to the front of the plane. The registration clearly says 1995.

"This is some sort of scam. I'm telling you there's no way this plane was built in 1995. Just look at the bathrooms. I bet you the bathrooms are the ones with the swirlie flush, where you can't find the damned flush button."

Brett jumps up and runs to the bathroom to take a look. Meanwhile, I notice that the window pull down thingies are pretty yellow and look like something out of an old James Bond movie. He returns with a satisfied gleam in his eyes. "Yup, exactly as I thought. They have the weird swirlie flush and they even still have the 'No Smoking' sign in them. I mean how fu%ked is that?"

So the whole flight we're debating this issue back and forth, convinced there's a scam going on. The literature on the plane says it's an MD-80. Who knows? This is China. There's a scam going on every second.

Category: Mr. Asia

Comments (2)

Comments

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Stinkfoot

July 11, 2006 4:54 AM

Are you serious? McDonald Douglas changed the name from DC-9 to MD-80. A DC-9 and an MD-80 are the same thing. No scam.

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corbett

July 11, 2006 8:53 PM

Hehe, we figured that out, but we are still wondering if a plane that feels and looks like it's 25 years old was actually manufactured in 1995. That's the scam we're wondering. Or was it just refurbished in 1995?

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