Most people probably have a few horrorstories about flying with bad airlines. My dad told me the best one I’ve ever heard.
He was once looking for a cheap flight to somewhere in Asia, I think it was India that time. He was living in Holland so he got himself a computer printout of ALL the airlines that flew out of Amsterdam to that particular region in Asia, sorted by price.
Waayyyy at the bottom was something called Aryan Afghan Airlines, which sounds bizarre enough (although this was before the Taliban took over). The Aryan thing was never fully explained to him, but some have ventured the oppinion that it was a misguided attempt at trying to get white westerners to fly with the spooky airline. Presumably they meant something like “Afghani-Western Airlines”, but had a poor dictionary.
Anyway, he started to enquire why they were asking only half the price of their nearest competitor, and as soon as he got hold of their flight-route, he got the picture.
The plane it seems, was partially a cargo plane, the passenger cabin was fit in later (perhaps as a cover?). The flight route was as follows: “Amsterdam (Holland) — Moscow (Russia) — Kabul (Afghanistan)” and back again, the same way. You could catch some connecting flights from Moscow and to a lesser extent from Kabul, that would get you to India, Nepal, Morocco or a series of even more dubious places for cargo planes to be flying as passanger aircraft. Especially when you take into account the fact that the passenger cabin was probably nearly always empty.
If anyone has any info on this strange airline it would be greatly appreciated, as would other reports on suspicious sounding airlines and shaky flying experiences!
The term Aryan, used in this context, doesn’t carry the white-supremacist baggage that it usually does. The word “Aryan” has been used for centur… er, quite a while, to describe things related to Iran. Imagine the following the following conversation between two archaeologists:
ARCHAEOLOGIST #1: Dude, I found some really cool artifacts on this dig outside of Tehran.
ARCHAEOLOGIST #2: Dude, so they’re Aryan, then?
ARCHAEOLOGIST #1: Dude, WTF??
ARCHAEOLOGIST #2: Uh, never mind.
In other words, “Aryan” is a word that has been more or less replaced by “Iranian.” So what the airline was really trying to say was “Iranian-Afghani Airlines.”
As for suspicious-sounding airline names, you’d never get me on an airplane called a ValueJet. But then, since I don’t live anywhere near Florida, I doubt that I ever will have that problem.
For my money, “The WORST airline ever” title would go to the East German airline before the reunification.
They accepted passengers, but all the crew and male stewards (no women allowed to work I guess) wore military uniforms, olive drab with little ribbons and stars.
And they served food in tin multi-compartment pans, like C-rations.
I seem to remember reading a few years back that the airline with the highest crash rate was the national carrier for Bangladesh. A few years back, the best-maintained plane crashed, killing the Foreign Minister and half the prime minister’s cabinet. They bought cast-off Soviet airliners that Russia had found to be “not viable”. Most new parts were no longer available so the Russian mechanics who (tried) to maintain them would have to make new parts from scratch by hand. It is a popular story that if asked, the Russian mechanics would refuse to travel on them. - MC
Sweet Merciful Crap!
Just under 14 years?! And nothing new what so ever to contribute?!
This has to be a record for the stupidest fucking reason ever to resurrect a long, long, long dead thread.
This is the second thread from 200 a new poster has resurrected. Somebody needs to be in school instead of messing around online. A last fling perhaps? Idiot.