Avianca Air

The flight left Miami at 4 PM for Bogota, Colombia, arriving at 7:25 PM. The flight out of Bogota left at 9:30 PM and arrived at 1:30 AM – really not that bad compared to the 30+ hours it took me to get to Indonesia. I was, however, reminded of the differences in quality of air travel service in comparing the US to the developing world when several things occurred. One of the side-panels above the luggage storage fell on a passenger’s head, various luggage bins popped open during take-off and landing and the emergency oxygen device became unhinged and swung precariously over the heads of passengers for the duration of the flight. I was relieved at least to see on the label attached to the emergency oxygen devices that it had not yet expired. This experience reminded me of my trip to Colombia three years ago during which one of our flights between cities failed to deploy the aircraft’s landing gear. Luckily, there had been enough gas for the crew to manually lower the wheels. I do like that they show movies and serve alcohol though.