what makes or breaks a flight

Really quite simple: how crowded is the flight?

When largely empty, you can stretch out and sleep, the attendants are more attentive, bathrooms are always available when needed with no wait, and you get on and off quickly. These are always great experiences, and you arrive at the destination feeling greatly refreshed.

Unfortunately, this particular flight looks packed, judging from conditions in the gate area.

The one thing I don’t much care for on flights to and from Egypt… Egyptian parents have a fairly “hands off” style when it comes to child wildness. There’s something to be said for this as a parenting technique (and American kids love it when they live in Egypt), but it means that kids go crazy on these flights sometimes, running up and down the aisles and screaming, things like that.