AIRING OPINIONS TripAdvisor’s airline review section (www.tripadvisor.com/Airlines) has been fully up and running for a couple of months, following a limited beta launch early this year, with reviews for major carriers already in the thousands. It’s the most mainstream online platform for passengers to comment on their good and bad experiences, on the ground and in the air. While the reviews are interesting read­ing, the photo sections – there is one at the bottom of each airline’s page – are just as enlightening. The economy-class cabin photographs, in particular, can be sobering reminders of an experience that the subconscious seems to successfully delete by the time we reach the baggage carousel. Perhaps the most useful category is Food and Drink (above), which until recently was an area best researched on airlinemeals.net, a website that has been encouraging people to post pictures of their inflight meals since 2002. (I notice my photo of a Biman Bangladesh domestic flight snack box, taken that year, is still rated zero.) But while TripAdvisor’s airline reviews and photos are useful and quite entertaining, it will come as a relief to many to finally have a popular outlet to vent spleen against an industry that generally seems to turn a dismissively deaf ear to complaints.

Inflight entertainment Comic relief for air travellers is provided in a new video (below) from American actor Ryan Higa’s apparently very popular Nigahiga YouTube channel. It’s a spoof commercial for the fictional EveRy Airlines, featuring – among other staff – straight-talking cabin crew (“One of my pet peeves is when people ask for things”), and grumbling passengers (“The guy who sits by the window but has to pee every 20 minutes”). Although made by and aimed at millennial travellers, the miseries of flying economy class are so universal that there’s something in there for everyone, including a safety video, which, the flight attendant admits, nobody watches but that is shown anyway “so you don’t sue us”. Look up “Honest Airline Commercial” at YouTube.com.