TV notes: travel

Last night I caught an episode of Airline UK (Mondays, 10:30 p.m.), the original British series on which A&E’s Airline is based. (Not to be confused with BBC’s Airport, a different series entirely.) A&E rebranded the series “UK” and re-recorded the narrative soundtrack, but to me what makes it marginally more watchable than its American counterpart is the foreign setting itself. Sure, it’s basically the same formula, following often frustrated passengers and the airline employees (here, easyJet) who have to deal with them. But whereas Airline was tedious because of its familiarity (LAX and Midway, ho-hum), Airline UK is interesting because everything’s just a little bit different, like the European destinations. In the episode I watched, a traffic accident on the M1 caused a few passengers, including one especially irate woman, to miss their Nice-bound flight, which was eventually diverted to Lyon; weather conditions kept it from approaching their destination, and the plane was running out of fuel. Meanwhile one woman headed for Amsterdam realized her passport had been forgotten at home in a locked file box, and only she had the key, so she called her brother to bring the whole box to the airport. Once upon a time, I wanted to work for an airline—I even applied for a ticket-counter job at SFO several years ago, and I still like to think I’d be excellent in any kind of customer-service position—but as these programs show, there are good days, and then there are days from hell.

In other travel TV news, one of my favorite shows, The Amazing Race, is back for a fifth season, starting Tue., July 6 at 9:30 p.m. (CBS). Yay, finally! Teams will be introduced on the official website on Fri., June 4.