Gulf Air

Excellent – This airline is very good value. It is one of the cheapest and the food is great. They offered a variety of foods at each meal - so there would be something there to cater for everyone. The service was good, friendly and helpful. The only problem I had was the fact that it flies over the gulf so you always wonder will you arrive to your destination safely. However, in saying that, I would fly with them again as I had a good experience with this airline - the highlight being the delicious food! Great food, good service, cheap airline Flies over the gulf

Terrible – What went right with it? Not much. The food was a bland noodle thingie. The staff were rude and ignored economy passengers in favour of business. The flight was an hour late due to a mechanical issue. The plane itself hadn't been cleaned in Bahrain to save time, so it was filthy. Then the toilets on the left side of the plane stopped working and everyone had to queue on the right side of the plane. And as we were coming in for landing at Tullamarine, the entire electrical system stopped working! They were able to land us on emergency lighting and systems but we waited on the tarmac for an hour while an external generator was found to power the plane to operate the door.

I wrote a letter of complaint to Gulf who denied the power outage but admitted to the toilet fault, which are both offences to keep a plane grounded. They offered no compensation, not even an appology. price was good it went badly from there

Good – I have flown Gulf air from Sydney to London Heathrow in July 2005. I found the check in staff very well dressed and very helpful. Once on the plane the service got even better with nice friendly staff and all the modern screens and games on the plane. The food was very nice a mixture of arab and western food both tasty. They always brought you snacks and nibbles around along with regular drinks. The only problem is stopping twice to get to London. There is also a on board nanny. The staff, the food and the planes. You need to stop twice to get to London from Sydney.

Bad – I flew Gulf air from Singapore to Bahrain and was shocked at how disgusting and outdated the toilets were, considering the standard other airlines hold. The staff were frequently rude and aloof and the small tv screens on the back of the seats around me weren't working very well, I was only able to view the plane's progress as opposed to any real entertainment. It does the job well enough if all you want is a cheaper ride from a to be, but if you're after friendly service and something to ensure you don't die of boredom while in your seat, fly another airline. Cheap flights Rude air staff, revolting onboard toilets

Terrible – Unfortunately we flew Sydney to Cairo (return) with this disgrace of an airline. First leg took 42 hours (via London where we arrived at 5am and left to our own devices until 8am when a representative finally arrived, we didn't have a clue what was going on prior to that! )we arrived exhausted and took 2 days to recover. On the return journey we were offloaded in Bahrain for 24 hours, given sub-standard accommodation and fed what can only be described as pig-swill. Even though the airline knew we were to be off-loaded the staff didn't deem it necessary to tell the passengers when departing Cairo thereby negating any chance to obtain a change of clothes for our 24 hour unscheduled stay.(our luggage continued on it's merry way to Sydney without us)Everybody connected with Gulf Air that we spoke to lied to us (and I mean everybody including ground staff, flight staff, office staff in Bahrain would tell you absolutely anything to fob you off)We complained bitterly (something we rarely do)on our return to Sydney. We were asked to detail our horror journey in an email to the company, which we did. Although we followed up the initial complaint with numerous other emails we are yet to be contacted by Gulf Air, 6 months on. The best part of our dealings with this basket-case was disembarking Treated very poorly. Seats didn't recline, footrest broken, earjack didn't work, food was crap. You've really got to wonder what this airlines maintenance program is like given their inability to run a passenger service