Well, it finally happened. My first class experience on TG has become truely Royal!

From NRT to BKK, the front two rows were entirely occupied by one of the princesses and her family. I was LUCKY to be in the last row and away from all the chaos that took place. I mean the very top senior pursers kneeling and putting socks on the royal children; one of the children going back and forth between the toilet and his first row seat and sometimes bundling himself up in the comfort of the crew jump seats in front of the gallery... Somehow two toilets were always occupied and I was cordinally directed to the business class facility.

The Royal family had to be served first, of course, and it took nearly one hour before we got anything after take-off.

Well, there was simply an endless bubble as they must have stacked up extra bottles of champagne.
Oh yes, we were also the beneficiaries of the bubble burst plus the bounty of caviar!! The second serving of sevruga caviar, not to mention. I think the center seat german gentlemen pretty much had three servings of caviars while enjoying the royal spectacle. Departure at NRT was delayed as the Royal family boarded last minute and all TG staff at NRT were bowing on the boarding bridge as the plane moved away!

Upon landing at BKK, we passed the planes that must have landed earlier and headed straight to gate 12 where I found there is a
VIP entry port. As soon as the door opened,
an army of guards walked in and snapped up all of the royal family's carry-ons, of which there must have been more than 20!

After the royal family, we deplaned. Alah? no
electric cart service for first class passengers? TG staff said, " oh today there were many first class passengers." Excuse me? Eight of them were Royal families and they are long gone from the gate area and there were only 8 revenue? F class passeners.... So we trekked all the way to the T1 immigration where we passed the diplomatic counter.

Incidentally, I noticed that the JL flight that departed one hour earlier out of NRT had arrived just 30 minutes before.. Both JL and our TG were 747s, so our captain must have really flown the plane faster....
One final note. The chief purser in her beautiful Thai silk dress came to apologize for the "rough" service of the flight before
landing. I told her to have a good nite sleep! It would have been a far more Royal flight, had there not been that many Royal family aboard the flight....

I thought I kind of saw a glimpse of why TG still is not going to be successfully privatized.



[This message has been edited by Kaoru Kanetaka (edited 04-23-2002).]