Traveller letters: Best flight ever

ZOOM WITH A VIEW

Traveller flight tested Air Canada Toronto to Los Angeles (March 29-30). I did this trip last year and it is one of the best in-flight experiences I have ever had. Couldn't tell you where I sat, apart from having a window and being allowed to leave the shade up. Don't know or care what the seat room or meal service was like, [or] the entertainment system but the view was fantastic. Imagine flying alongside the Grand Canyon as the sun hits those cliffs, turning them into liquid gold, the Painted Desert and Monument Valley, Las Vegas and everything we had explored from the ground. However long the trip took it was not long enough.

- Ros Barwick

LETTER OF THE WEEK

My husband and I recently travelled to Melbourne by plane, with Regional Express taking us from our rural city to Sydney, and then Virgin to Melbourne. At the time, my husband had walking difficulties and received very welcome assistance from staff of both airlines, a wheelchair being provided for him when needed. He is elderly, thin and frail looking and at Sydney Airport he passed through the screening point in his wheelchair and was then randomly pulled over for an explosives check. Then he was told he had tested positive and received a patdown while seated in his chair, a run over his body with a wand, and then he was told three mandatory tests had to be carried out with the wand and test strips. Then he was let go. Was the wheelchair the culprit? On the return trip, he hobbled through the screening point to avoid any possible repeat performance.

- Joan Brown

NOT ALL IT SEEMS

I enjoyed the concept of "Crowning Glories" (Traveller, March 29-30), but I hope your readers won't be too disappointed if they "book a ticket to the Bahamas" and, when they get there, find that the vegetation is somewhat different to the coconut palm forest that featured in the accompanying photograph. I lived in Nassau for five years and never saw such a thing, on New Providence or elsewhere. Coconut palms do grow there, but they are not indigenous. They also may be disappointed when they learn they are not actually in the Caribbean. The Bahama Islands are in the Atlantic, between Florida and Cuba, and the closest they will have been to being called Caribbean will have been when a part of the film Pirates of the Caribbean was filmed there. True, pirates did once live there, and the beaches and weather are good - better in fact than the photo suggests - but it is not the Caribbean.

- Richard Barrack

LIFT YOUR GAME

Just read Tony Cook's letter (Traveller Letters, March 29-30) about paying too much for transfers in Boracay. My similar experience was arriving in Los Angeles a few years back. I'd arranged to be met by a town car for the ride to my downtown hotel with my young son. Total cost with tip: $US110. Leaving a few days later, we did the return trip to the airport via the metro train system. Took an hour but the total cost for both of us was $US2.20. Amazing how a bit of local knowledge can be put to good use.

- Danny Gelb