T5

What where jmcAIR’s DC-10s like?

The air-conditioning and seats were clearly faulty (as mentioned above) and the inflight entertainment system had faults, too. Here is the report I wrote just after the trip:

I flew on both their DC-10 aircraft to Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic from Gatwick (UK) and back again in August 2000.

The first problem was the delay. We checked in at some ridiculous time… 05:00(ish) for an early flight to find it was actually going to be delayed by at least 3 hours – so, okay, it’s not the end of the world! We find that JMC have been kind enough to give every passenger a free £5 food voucher for the inconvenience caused. If you spend more than £5k on a holiday and 3 hours is wasted, this works out to approximately £44. We were given £20 in food vouchers. Delays are every day things but this was a charter flight. We didn’t have to only fly with the company, but also to spend 14 nights with an over-enthusiastic holiday rep!

Once the aircraft was eventually ready, I did my pre-flight checks, only to find my headphone socket in my arm-rest did not work and was too loud and it would not turn down. The brain dead stewardess suggested I plugged my socket into my mother’s armrest as she was not intending on using it! 9 hours on a flight and I can’t even take advantage of the entertainment because my headphones don’t work!

It turns out that broken headphones were not such a problem after all, the entertainment was rubbish – I thought airlines showed all the latest film releases on long-haul flights, but it would seem I was wrong. We had to endure “Yellow Subamrine” – The Beatles cartoon made decades ago! It was hell and I had no never been so annoyed on a flight as I was on JMC5120 to Puerto Plata. God only knows what their short haul flights are like!!

Go easy on me. I was only 15 when I wrote that. 😮