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Looking
forward to the Travel Year 2008 Looking forward to 2008, I'm confident already that it could shape up to 2007 in terms of being my best yet. However, let me not get ahead of myself - it will turn out as it turns out, but what I already have planned is exciting me! A couple of short haul trips kick off the year in February - the first to Malta with a great number of my friends and the second to Marrakech later in the month, my first visit to this apparently wonderful city. March sees my usual big holiday of the year and this year I will be heading down to Australia, so look out for a new section to this website. I'll be taking BA Club World to Hong Kong, Virgin Atlantic's Upper Class onward to Sydney and then Singapore Airlines First Class to get back to Hong Kong via Singapore. That one I am especially looking forward to. Next up is an interesting fare that I learned about from Flyertalk. Suffice to say it starts in Colombo and ends in New York and I've managed to divide the trip into two main parts and route my ticket through Sydney. So I'll be back in Australia in May, as well as Singapore, Colombo and Paris. The exact flight details can be seen on my flight listing, but the main event for me will undoubtedly be trying out the new Airbus A380 "Superjumbo" in Singapore Airlines business class cabin on the upper deck! Also there is a strong possibility of more business trips for me this year, not just to New York, but also to Asia Pacific area, so I await those trips with excitement.
On the short haul side, I have my
first trip on Ryanair coming up in June when I go to Cork for
the weekend. I can't say I'm looking forward to that quite as
much as Singapore Airlines first class or the A380, but you have
to try these things, don't you! You can really only criticise
once you've experienced it I guess - and you never know it may
turn out to be OK!
Looking back to
the Travel Year 2007 I think, looking back, I can't really have even begun to realise how wonderful my travel year 2007 would turn out to be. Just one look at my flights in 2007 will show a plethora of premium cabin experiences and trips to many parts of the world.
Two of my major trips were
recorded in sections of this website. I diarised both
my trip to Asia in March
and my two visits to the USA
during the year (yes, yes I know the diary section from part two
is still outstanding
However, that was only the beginning. I managed four other long haul trips in the year. Two visits to my perennial favourite Bahrain. And late in the year, two unexpected business trips to New York on new business class only airline EOS, which I reported on here. On the short haul side, I must say I found flying in Europe to have become a serious chore. This may have come down to having had only one business class sector (my first flight of the year - to Nice), but mainly I think it comes down to the pain with security, the one bag rule and British Airway's appalling punctuality. Signs are positive that improvement in those last two things are on the cards in 2008. Overall, with almost 92,000 miles under my belt (for reference that's equivalent to 4.5 returns to Sydney or over 13 return flights to New York!) most of them in premium cabins, I can safely say that's it's been my best travel year yet! (In case you're wondering how much of those 92,000 miles I carbon offset, the answer is nil. A big fat zero. I will have paid the unfair Airline Passenger Duty to the UK Government to a level six or seven times greater than the cost required to offset the carbon from my flight. It's the government's choice not to spend this unfair tax on carbon offsetting, not mine. I would obviously happily pay the carbon offset if this unfair tax were rescinded. Get European airlines in the carbon trading scheme and get rid of these unfair taxes NOW!)
I've been on that plane! It was with great relief that I
read of the lucky escape that the passengers of BA038 from
Beijing, which crash landed at Heathrow last week. In one of my
more geeky moments, I decided to use the
Heathrow and Gatwick
movements website to check whether I'd ever flown on that
aircraft, registration G-YMMM. And yes, you guessed it - I have!
I must say that this revelation
has made the whole situation seem much more real to me. Back in
February 2006 I enjoyed a very short hop between Bahrain and
Doha on this very aircraft. OK, so I was airborne for only 15
minutes or so, but nevertheless I believe it's the first and
only time I've flown on an airliner which has subsequently
crashed.
Let's hope the air crash investigators can quickly piece together what happened.
Madrid Air Traffic
Control visit Well, it's been a while since my last update, mainly because I've been concentrating on writing up my trip to Asia! I recently went on a short business trip to Madrid and my colleague over there is married to one of the managers of the Air Traffic Control centre for most of Spain, which is based near Madrid. And just as I thought I was about to be whisked off to dinner, we ended up at the ATC centre where I was given a guided tour. All I can say is wow! What an experience. It was fascinating watching all the controllers at work at rows of huge radar screens. It was all far too confusing for a novice, but wonderful to see what goes on behind the scenes. I must say that after about half an hour of being in there I was pretty stressed out myself, I really don't know how these people do it - it's a massively stressful job.
As someone who travels frequently
by air, it is easy to take for granted getting on an aeroplane
and flying somewhere without considering all the work that has
to go into getting me from A to B safely and quickly. So I just
wanted to dedicate this small section of my sight to all those
people who work tirelessly all day to ensure that the whole
global aviation things moves along smoothly - your work is
greatly appreciated, especially by this frequent flyer!
Strike called off - at the eleventh hour! A wonderful piece of news last night, BA and the T&G union have reached agreement and the union has called off the planned BA cabin crew strike. I must say watching the joint announcement by Willie Walsh (CEO of BA) and Tony Woodley (General Secretary of the T&G) was a first for me, and both appeared calm and complimentary about the other, keen to stress this was a new start for the airline/employee relations. So far as I can tell this is indeed an important watershed moment and I hope the industrial relations problems that have plagued BA for a number of years have taken a massive step forward.
Strike
Blues
BASSA (the trade union
representing BA's cabin crew) have just announced the first of
three 3-day strikes. Unfortunately the second of these is
supposedly on 5th-7th February, the day I'm supposed to return
from Nice. So I'm not quite sure what to do. Options include
booking a backup flight on easyJet (for £37) or trying to move
the BA return to Sunday night instead. Or just cancelling the
trip altogether, or indeed waiting and hoping that the strike
doesn't go ahead. Not sure what I'm going to do yet, I think I
need to speak to my friends and decide what we're going to do!
Bucket loads of cheap
BA miles :) Well I picked up a little gem of a scheme on the BA board at Flyertalk this week. It appears that Marriott are allowing members to buy a virtually unlimited amount of Marriott points at a very reasonable rate of US$10 per 1,000 points (even better with the current £:$ exchange rate). These points can be transferred into Tesco Clubcard points at various rates, the most efficient being 125k Marriott points for 35,000 Tesco Clubcard points. Then, you can transfer your Tesco Clubcard points into BA miles, so 35k Tesco Clubcard points = 84,000 BA miles!!! This effectively means you can buy BA miles for only £0.79p each, compared to the cost on BA.com of 1.6p. Full details can be found on this thread. So this has enabled me to procure some much needed miles for my forthcoming summer holidays to USA (I will be spending probably 3 weeks there in June and September, so keep an eye out here for an report section)!
March 2007 -
Asian Tour in the planning! I'm currently in the final stages of planning for my usual 2 week holiday in March and this year I'm going to be visiting Asia. Not to give too much away at the moment, but the itinerary includes the following: Flights: Gulf Air First class, Singapore Airlines First class, Thai Airways First class, ANA Business class Places: Bangkok, Beijing, Tokyo, Singapore & Kuala Lumpur Hotels: IC Bangkok, IC Beijing, IC Tokyo Bay, IC Singapore and Hilton Kuala Lumpur
I will of course be creating a new
trip section for this holiday (my first new full section since
California in Sept 05
Multiple Annoyances... The BA board at Flyertalk is a bit like a radio station at the moment. Every time you tune in, the hits just keep on coming. The latest serious degradation in customer service is the announcement about reductions in checked luggage - a new maximum limit of only 23kg per bag, from a previous limit of 32kg. This will lead to many travellers, top business executives amongst them, being forced to repack their bags on the floor of the check-in area. A truly bizarre move, as you can't pay excess baggage - the 23kg limit is absolute, you cannot check-in a bag that weighs more. This comes hot on the heals of the seating fiasco. A botched implementation of a new seating policy, which saw many frequent travellers seats being moved around, no clarity on what the new policy actually is, shoddy technical implementation so that you don't know if not being able to secure certain seats is a new "feature" or a system bug and an apparent serious degradation in the seats available for BA Golds and other Oneworld elites, particularly when travelling with others on the same PNR. Both of these nonsenses are BA specific, but they come hot on the heals of the new security policies pertaining to liquids in hand baggage and the hugely increased passenger surcharges. Flying from the UK has rarely been less enjoyable and looks set only to get worse. Bad news for those of us stuck here. Those who aren't should take one simple piece of advice if considering travelling to or through the UK. Avoid.
New
Business Class frenzy!
There has been a veritable frenzy of new
business class announcements in the last few weeks. Perhaps the main
three are Cathay Pacific, Singapore Airlines who both launched new
products in all three classes and, this week, British Airways announced
a major upgrade to their business class product, Club World. What more
perfect subject for my first blog entry?
First off the mark were Cathay, the Hong Kong based airline. Despite trumping their competitors in announcing their new offerings, the announcement was lacklustre and details of the new products very scant. The only information I've been able to find are small pictures on their website. It appears that the new first class is very luxurious, as one would expect from the purveyor of one of the best existing first class experiences in the world. The business class has adopted the increasingly popular "herringbone" layout as seen initially on Virgin Atlantic and latterly on Air New Zealand and Air Canada. This design provides seats at a 45 degree angle to the cabin, offering good space and privacy, and with aisle access for all. However it is the economy product which appears to be truly revolutionary. The seats' main feature is a hard back, which allows you to recline without impeding into or stealing space from the seat behind. For someone like me who has spent more than their fair share of time down the back, I must say this is a truly welcome development, as long as the standard seat pitch is not being reduced to accommodate it.
So all-in-all it's been a good few weeks for premium class travellers with some exciting new products being announced. As always when new products come along there will be some uncertainty for travellers about which routes and dates are going to be equipped. I hope that all the airlines involved provide clear communication about this over the next few years. |
Archives Looking forward to the Travel Year 2008 Looking back to the Travel Year 2007 Madrid Air Traffic Control visit Strike called off - at the eleventh hour! Bucket loads of cheap BA miles :) |
).
Next
on the press wires was Singapore Airlines, another of the world's top
rated airlines. Their launch was to much fanfare and the product,
especially the
In
the
Last,
and least only in terms of it being in one cabin and only being an
"upgrade" rather than a new product, is British Airways. Their new