pilotboy1985YYC

I flew LX 16 yesterday from ZRH-JFK in First Class.

It was scheduled as an A333 which means the nice new suites! That's the reason I picked swiss as appose to LH.

Well when I boarded to my dismay I found myself on an A332. Wow, this aircraft has seen better days. The seats were worn, the carpet was torn. Scuffs and pen marks everywhere! What a disgusting aircraft.

I say to myself " Not to worry, It's better than Coach! I'll just settle in and watch some Movies On Demand!" I try to get comfortable but my footrest is broken and takes a lot of tweaking to get it the way i want.
I've passed about 45 minutes and after getting disgusted with this 1st class ( more like 1st class in a 3rd world) I decided to watch a movie and be grateful I'm not flying in coach.

Upon starting my IFE I'm puzzled to see it says " Movies will be played on a loop" and when I selected my movie it says " Warning! Too much time may have past, do you still wish to watch this movie? Time Elapsed 25 mins"
Hmm, this is puzzling to me. what do you mean time elapsed 25 mins? This isn't sounding like VOD to me, but I was optomistic and thought maybe it was a glitch?
Sure enough when my movie started it was already 25 minutes into the movie. YOU'RE KIDDING ME? right?
After checking my boarding pass to make sure I'm in the year 2010 I scratch my head and my anger grows. I can't watch this movie now. Perhaps I'll watch a tv show? WOW, what a selection of two TV's shows they have.
They are all the same thing, playing on a loop. So I can't watch that either.

Now, I'm only in my lower 20's and I honestly can't remember that last time I was in an airplane that played loop TV. Since i had time to pass I thought I'd think about it...
I mostly fly Air Canada and all their airplanes have AVOD, so it's wasn't on Air Canada.
I've flown Westjet a few times and they have live seatback TV, so it wasn't them
I also flown UA overseas a couple times and they provided me with ondemand.
Same with Thai, LH, Singapore and numours other airlines.

I decided I'll just watch some movies on my laptop, no problem! My battery is at 26 % but I'll just plug it in..
I search around the ancient seat but I see no place to plug in my laptop. It must be hiding somewhere, right? I call the FA over and ask for help in finding a place to plug in my laptop.
Her reply " there is no place on this type of airplane, sorry sir. This is a much older airplane than we normally fly on this route"

So now I can't even use my laptop. I'm left with nothing else to do but sleep.. on a day flight none the less.

Well time for a bathroom break and splash some cold water on my face to freshen up, after all I came from Bangkok, this is my second flight of the day.

When I get to the bathroom, the sink is not working, you cannot run water. Same with ALL the bathrooms onboard.All the sinks are plugged up.

Wow, how could this get any worse? Luckly it didn't.

What a terrible flight. I would of rather flown UA Coach than LX First yesterday. So long as this terrible aircraft is in LX's fleet I will not fly LX.

Thanks for listening to my rant and I welcome all comments, including flamming!

SleepOverGreenland

So sorry to hear. This is really bad, given LX is usually providing an excellent service on all A340 and A333.

Did you or will you file a complaint with LX? Unlike many other posters this experience is a real reason to complain IMHO.

yycworldtraveler

Sorry to hear about your experience...you were unlucky. Perhaps there were operational issues that forced an aircraft substitution.

LX F (new or old) is usually a Fantastic experience. It's my favourite *A F along with NH.

Hope you enjoyed BKK.

johndeere19

Unfortunate experience with an airline that is high up on my favorites and normally provides a great service with both their hard and soft products.

mamb0

wow. Sorry to hear.

I would have deboarded.

Any excuses, any apologies, any compensation (and I do not mean miles)?

They advertise a certain standard, they should try to stick to it.

seat 1a

So they had to substitute the air craft for some reason , unfortunately for you to an old version , happened to me as well with LX and others , ac substitution
is unfortunately not unusual . To bad as LX F really is a great product.

But being in your early 20's it was a good experience for you to see what the old foxes had to suffer through

Also at your age i am sure you had an ipad loaded with movies , books and music

rorschi

C'mon - you had to see the old F on the A332 just after delivery. There were similar seats like in C in the very same plane nowadays, just with a brighter overlay

Concerning the movie system, I can deal with (and have the habitude), not working sinks in the lavs are unacceptable, though.

mamb0

If it looked like this, I guess I would not have deboarded.

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Swiss...e0f9a3ebf97f9c

scandi777

1. The badger and the wedding dress. Finnish National Television, 1979. Special episode: Old men in a sauna. German and Albanian subtitles.
2. Plumbing for novices. ARD 1984. Special episode: Mum, I can't flush it out. English and German subtitles.

divjan

these were the regular F seats that LX has on their 332, i find them extremely comfortable..they are not esthetically pleasing... but still good ...brings back the good old days in the MD11 nose...the red carpet
i guess for some people a 30inch screen w on-demand video, doors to enclose them-selves in a coffin would be better than decent service on-board...

btw for the op how was the service on your flight?

ACYYZ/SD

It's always difficult when an airlines fleet is in "transition". Sometimes the product specs are like night and day.

I need to travel to Rome in November, and was considering AZ ex JFK based on some attractive low-season Magnifica Class (J) Fares. Of the daily 330's all are on AZ's new aircraft with new configuration. One weekly flight (the day that I needed to depart) was on the Air One last generation configuration, and accordingly, decided against AZ. In this case the two products are truly like night and day.

rorschi

And this were the seats the A332 had in F between 1998 and 2000:

http://www.airliners.net/photo/Swiss...dd476c218f8d1f

(same on the 747-300, A310 and MD11)

They were not full flat, btw...

mamb0

What the OP experienced was a configuration 2 generations back. In my view it is not a matter of transition. Swiss should reimburse.

SMK77

Deboarding somewhere over the Atlantic? I would help you any given time...

They do not promise new F for any route, hence where is LX's liability?

IFE can fail (and it does on LX on almost any flight nowadays) and there was no power for the laptop. Were any other elements of the F experience missing (lounge, seat, food, service?). If the OP thinks that coach beats LX F, then he should fly coach. I am taking LX F happily any given day...

JohnDP

deleted.