Flew PEK - YYZ recently. We were seated in the starboard side pods. Right from the get go though, IFE was having the typical problems. The FAs had to resort to doing the old-style safety demo because they couldn't show the video.

I've stopped bothering with IFE. My iPod and my books provide everything I need. A couple of seats in front of me though, Mom decided to politely take things up with the SD. After a few reboots most of IFE worked, but the map did not. Mom persisted with the SD - she wanted to keep track of where we were. The SD tried valiantly, but no dice. IFE map just wouldn't come through.

So about 2h into the flight, the SD visits Mom with the captain in tow. The captain apologized about the map not working, and presented Mom with an official AC Polar Orientation Chart (3rd Edition) which had our course plotted in blue highlighter and various names of cities along the way hand written by the captain.

There was one further hand written notation on the map:


Now how's that for compensation? ^