Mattd

Exactly, both Portugal and SA had the initial wave of the latest sub-variant and neither had excessive deaths compared to Delta or the BA.2 Omicron. The OP is purely scare tactics.

They were very good and yes lay flat config.

This is the part I really do not get, they require all to wear a mask, then feed everybody at the same time, when all remove their mask to eat and drink, making the wearing of a mask pointless in the first place.

I think that rather depends on where you are flying to, the war in Ukraine is making flights to and from Europe far more difficult for the airlines and the distance further, which I guess adds to the cost. Fuel costs have risen tremendously which is certainly not helping the ticket cost. From what I can see, the flights are actually reasonably full of passengers, which should justify more flights. The other issue is that airlines and airports are critically low on staff, not just due to sick leave, a lot of redundancies happened over the last couple of years and the companies just assumed that everyone would rush back to their old job, this has not been the case, for example, in Europe (and US) the main reason for the big delays is shortage of staff, especially security, check in, baggage handling etc. where the salaries are close to minimum wage levels and those who left have found better paying employment. It takes months to train new people, those working airside have to go through rigorous security clearance checks etc. etc. Some airlines cannot put more flights on right now, a lot of the senior pilots elected to retire or take other employment, which has left the airlines with a pilot shortage and it takes years to replace each one, cabin crew are in short supply etc. etc. all of which will eventually increase each airline's overhead as the the only way to solve this is to employ, train and pay competitive salaries.

I beg to differ, a huge amount has changed since late December 2021, at that time I was checking flights to the UK for early August 2022 and could book a return FIRST class ticket with Emirates for 118,500 THB, in fact a friend of mine did so and flies in a couple of weeks. Unfortunately for me, I didn't book it, as at that time it really wasn't clear what the future held Covid wise. Roll forward to May 2022 and I started looking again, Emirates Biz class was now 130k +, I did end up booking a biz class return with Oman for 99,505 THB which was by far the best price available at that time. I would normally fly in to to MAN and out of LHR, that option isn't available this time with Oman, as they are not flying in to MAN right now, so it means a night in a hotel close to LHR and a 160 mile drive the following day, such is life! My last trip to the UK was late July 2019 where I paid 58k return biz class with Oman (BKK-MAN-LHR-BKK via MCT), so yes, a lot has changed.