I don’t normally write blog posts about flights I take but I am going to make an acception with a recent one I took on Royal Jordanian to Amman and back as the experience was so shocking!
Where do I start? Why not with adherence to Covid protocols seeing that we are in the middle of a global pandemic costing thousands of lives everyday. Basically there was none! About 25% of the plane were not wearing masks and there was no enforcement from staff, but why would you expect them to enforce it is they were not following it also, some had their masks under their chin and others had their noses sticking out. This is totally unacceptable and with the number of people coughing on board it was a flying cesspool of virus.
Now let’s talk about the rude staff, half way through the flight my 10 year old son took a photograph of my 7 year old daughter, we were in our seats not disturbing anyone, he did this just as an air steward walked past, the steward then shouted at him saying photography was not allowed on board causing him to think he had done something wrong and almost bringing him to tears as he is very sensitive. That was totally unacceptable not only the fact that he shouted at a child for doing absolutely nothing wrong but in all my years of flying around the world I have never heard a rule about no photography mid flight (I could understand if it was during take off and landing when all electronic items needed to be switched off, but this was a couple of hours in). The steward was probably worried that his picture was taken with his mask under his chin and there being repercussions if it was posted on social media. I would have reported him but he conveniently did not have a name tag on his waistcoat.
So basically it is acceptable to not wear a mask and cough everywhere, but to take a photograph is not acceptable.
Now let’s talk about the food shall we, first of all we had no options on either the inbound or outbound flight, there was only beef with what I can only call milky fluid, I don’t even know what it was, maybe puréed potatoes or even mustard??? Whatever it was it was inedible. We refused it on the way home as what is the point it would just go to waste, although it was only fit for the bin anyway, absolutely disgusting stuff that was not fit for human consumption.
As for boarding, the London to Amman out bound flight went without a hitch, they followed correct procedure with loading from the back forwards to allow people to board quickly as would be expected. But, the flight back from Amman to London they did no such thing, in fact it was a free for all, they did not even announce that the gate was open just people started barging through.
As you can probably tell I was not happy with the service I received on Royal Jordanian and I will refuse to fly with them again unless there is no other option. Their attitude towards the safety of their passengers during the current climate was atrocious and I will never forgive them for shouting at my son bringing him to tears. Two last things I have just remembered when writing this on our flight from London to Amman my storage pouch in from of me still had the rubbish from the previous passenger in it, surely that should be checked by the cleaning crew, and if they missed that what else did they miss and not clean. And on our return flight from Amman to London I went to the bathroom twice and both times they did not have any paper towels to dry my hands after washing them.
For reference the flights were RJ112 departing London Heathrow and RJ111 departing Amman. But I expect you will get a similar experience on all their flights.
