A BEAstly Journey
SIR.—Your correspondent, Mr Cyril Ray, record- mends BUA as a superior alternative to BEA when , flying to Edinburgh (Letters, June 10). You do go in a rather splendid jet, and the service is superb in the air, but there the superiority ends.
Last month, I, all in favour of supporting private enterprise against the state-owned monoliths, opted in favour of flying BUA Gatwick to Edinburgh. On arrival at Gatwick (and not at Victoria, where one might have had a chance of getting to King's Cross for a train) we were told that the Edinburgh flight was cancelled because of fog (there was fog, but not sufficient to stop two or three BEA Vanguards from Heathrow from landing), and that we would be flown to Glasgow instead. Not 'do you mind going to Glasgow'—`You are going to Glasgow' The Edinburgh contingent was then shunted on to the half-empty Glasgow-bound plane which is scheduled to leave thirty minutes after the Edin- burgh plane. Add to this delay, a further thirty minutes because of an engine fault of some kind, and we eventually left Gatwick eighty or ninety minutes later than our tickets said we should. On arrival at Glasgow we were required to hike through the mud carrying our baggage (why do airlines always do everything they can to ease the baggage problem at the start of the journey, but always require you ' to 'claim' it at the airport, carry it to the bus in order to claim it again at the terminal? Or am I being very ingenuous?) to a prehistoric unheated bus with horsehair seats. Even BEA provide a comfort- able bus on these extra-curricular trips. The bus took over two hours to get to Edinburgh, arriving just about half an hour before the 4 p.m. Talis- man from King's Cross, which left London about half an hour after we checked in at Victoria.
On balance I'd say fly BEA.
ROBIN GOODSIR SMITH
I Gerrwd Mansions, 21 Gerrard Street, London, WI
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