Big Bird, Small Bird

End of last year, in a span of two months, I had the experience of flying in one of the smallest and the biggest commercial planes flying our skies.
The Annual Scientific Meeting in Wellington was in a busy downtown convention center, and just to avoid the hassle of parking in central Wellington, which at it's best is a lottery, I flew. The flying time to the capital is half an hour and though I knew it won't be a Boeing 777, the size of the aircraft left me gobsmacked. This was a Beechcraft 1900D aircraft which is literally the size of a school bus with less number of seats (19 to be exact) than a school bus!! As we boarded the plane, we were greeted by a flight attendant, who as we immediately found out, doubled up as the co pilot. As we settled in our seats, one on each side of the plane, she told us to buckle up and off she went to the cockpit.
As we taxied for takeoff I couldn't but help noticing that the door to the cockpit was open, and I could see everything. And I mean everything, including all the fancy gadgets, gearshifts, blinking lights and thousands of dials in the dashboard (that's what it's called in a plane too, I presume). But the only thing that I could recognize was the altimeter, which sat bang in the middle and as the plane took off the altitude increased. It also had a horizontal line in the middle indicating the horizon, and as plane tilted and made a 270 degree turn towards the south, the line tilted and finally became horizontal as the plane settled on its course. The flight was bumpy and even at 17000 feet, the turbulence causing the plane to almost flip like a tin can, in a different occasion might have been nerve racking.
But not this time. This is the closest I'll be near a cockpit, I thought. I was enjoying every moment of it and as we touched down lightly on to the runway, the fun finished too soon and I was feeling like a schoolboy, wanting a little bit more of the ride!

Twenty-seven days later, I boarded the new Airbus A380 from Changi to fly to Paris from Singapore. I must say, my expectations were high for this two storied giant beast of a flying machine, the one of a kind flying our skies. But disappointment set in as soon as I boarded the aircraft. The same seat arrangement, same seat size and leg space and elbow room. The aisles were equally narrow and toilets equally cramped. All in all, the same cattle class.

For the sheer joy of flying, give me the school bus over the Double-Decker any day.