I recently flew Austrian Air ticketed in J on an itinerary JFK-VIE-JFK.

I can only comment on the westbound leg because I accepted a downgrade overnight from JFK to VIE. I was with my spouse on an AmEx "twofer". We felt the cash offer of $400, plus exit row seats, plus two [upgradeable] Y tickets to any destination in the AS system (via Vienna), on a flight we both would be sleeping, was acceptable. We did indeed sleep over 5 hours - as long as we would have in J.

The J seats on the return leg were on a par with the best I have experienced on AA, BA, LH, JL and SA. The food courses were superb (and many) as was the white wine. Of course, they were typical of the Austrian cuisine.

Only one problem: I tried to use the power-port with my IBM ThinkPad. The ports do not accept the ‘cigarette lighter’ style converter I carry. Instead, the purser provides a complete port to laptop device with a ‘generic’ transformer and multiple female connectors to the laptop. When I used it, my battery level remained at 100%; but my screen turned off about every 5 minutes. Lowering the lid brought it back to life. When I unplugged the connector, I noticed the screen dimmed. Finally I decided that the transformer and my laptop were not compatible and I decided to use my batteries.


[This message has been edited by kappa (edited 07-14-2003).]