Air Portugal is Great!

Finding a flight over to Italy is a bit difficult for us; we take a ship back, so we only need one way tickets. It seems the airlines don’t like that. The main airlines charge MORE than TWICE as much for a one way ticket as for a round ticket! You can cheat, sign up for a round trip ticket and just not come back, but the fine print on the ticket forbids this and it can come back to bite you if you ever use the same airline again, as we discovered once with Air France.

Anyway, this year, once we had confirmed that one way tickets were still so expensive on Air France and Lufthansa, we found very reasonable tickets on Air Portugal to Rome via Lisbon. It took a little longer but the cost was much less than half the cost of a direct one way ticket on the other airlines.

Shortly before our flight, though, Air Portugal offered us a opportunity to upgrade to business class by bidding for upgraded tickets. We’ve never flown anything but economy before (actually, when he was a law professor Karl’s new secretary once booked him first class to a conference – she said she assumed professors flew first class – which took some explaining). Karl hates flying (although Zanax eases the terror a bit) and he never thought first class would make much difference. Leslie Ruth is so slender she fits into an economy seat just fine. But, just as a lark, we put in a minimum bid to upgrade. Shortly before our flight the upgrade charge appeared on our bank statement and Air Portugal confirmed we were upgraded. While expensive, the cost was still less than booking a one way economy ticket on Lufthansa or Air France.

It turns out there is a difference! The seats were greatand they reclined completely to make beds.The food was excellent and the service was outstanding. We really felt like the cabin stewards were glad to see us and wanted us to be happy. We thoroughly enjoyed the excellent selection of Portugues wines.

Of course, Karl couldn’t help commenting that the seats and service were about what they used to be in economy class, back in the 1960s, but he suppressed these curmudgeonly feelings and enjoyed the flight. Well, maybe enjoy is too strong a word, but he certainly hated the flight a whole lot less than usual!

Not sure if we’ll do it again, but it was fun to see how the other half lives.