Don’t have much to add really, sit back and relax.

“This simulation shows air traffic worldwide over a 24-hour period. It’s amazing to see where and when people fly. There are so many interesting traffic patterns. You’ll want to watch it several times. It’s a view of the world you’ve never seen before.”

[Via Steve Clayton | Eileen Brown]

Last week in Amsterdam I overheard that typical business traveler’s conversation again, one guy talking to another (not traveling together) on the bus between the terminal and the plane. Not just talking, more like complaining really. Complaining about the amount of travel they need to do for work. One week to Boston every 2 weeks says one guy, and next week already to Paris… blablabla. It’s a lie! Not the travel, but the complaint. It’s a lie, it always is.

In fact they’re just bragging about each other about their travel, it seems like complaining about it is the most effective way to do that. And yes, also I can be happy to be back home after a busy month of traveling but I don’t regret any of the travel, nor will I complain about it. It’s part of why I like my job and trust me, it’s the same for all business travelers.

So the next time you hear to travelers complaining about the amount of travel ahead of them… don’t buy it, they’re just showing off.

I was thinking to myself last time not to get in to all this too much and yet here we are again, will this ever change? Last time I talked a bit about my plan to go with my wife to NYC for our 10th wedding anniversary and how basically even with enough miles on Eurobonus that still wasn’t possible.

A week or two after that debacle I changed the plan from NYC to London. I fly to London almost every two weeks with VLM, a local airline from Antwerp to London City, and surely have enough miles to get a flight out of it. First of all I must add I like flying VLM. The 50 minute flights with their Fokker 50’s are pleasant and since check-in is until 10 minutes before take off that makes it even better. It’s got to be for a reason they are the Best Regional Airline for Europe, kudos to them.

That said… I wanted to spend the weekend in London and since I was already flying for work from Thursday morning I needed a ticket for my wife only flying in on Friday afternoon and then we would both go back on Sunday evening. My tickets paid as it was business travel, hers on my miles. We (can’t say I since someone on the team takes care of travel) try to book the extra flight and VLM tells us it’s not possible. So I give them a call. So they tell me that when you book using miles that can only happen via their website. Fair enough, my ticket is booked, I’ll book the other using the site. No sir, you need to book both tickets online. Okay, can be done, I’ll book mine from Thursday using my American Express and get the other one using miles. No sir, you need to book both tickets using the miles… and you need to leave and return the same dates. Euh, that doesn’t really make sense to me. Why would I pay my own ticket since I’m going for work anyway? She tells me that is the way the system is set up… that it is for business travelers. Doh! How do you think I got these miles to begin with? Seriously. Sure, blame it on the system.

Anyway, I finished the call with VLM in some “whatever, let’s agree to disagree, this is just wrong, etc …” kind of salutation and thought about another possibility. British Midland (BMI, part of Star Alliance) is also flying to London from Brussels. That means going back to the Eurobonus points but what the heck, let’s try that one. Yes you can book a flight for someone else as long as you approve, doesn’t matter when you’re going etc… all fine. The ticket will be 40.000 miles though (knowing it were 60.000 miles for that return flight to NYC… if I would ever been able to book it). YWhat the heck, it’s our 10th anniversary, okay for the ridiculous amount of miles then, book it. Oh yes, and also have to pay 240 Euros in taxes, airport tax and stuff. Excuse me?! I can probably find a flight for less than that! Hell, the Eurostar is cheaper than what you charge me in tax only! Leave it, thank you very much indeed!

Maybe you think I’m exaggerating. Maybe you think I should have just bought the ticket and all, what’s the big deal, it was our 10th wedding anniversary remember. But that’s not really the point. If I want to buy a ticket I’ll pay whatever the price is for that. But when I want to be rewarded for my loyalty, I want an actual reward… and not some kind of scam.

Curious to hear about other people’s experiences.

Working at C. has brought me to many gorgeous hotels around the world and again this week, I have the pleasure to stay at the wonderful Grove hotel in Watford, Hertforshire, UK. It really is one of my favorite hotels in Europe and I would love to stay here one time with some free time to enjoy the amenities. Unfortunately it is all business this week and hardly any time left for pleasure. (I did jump in the pool yesterday and let my bones warm up a bit in the sauna, after being hit again with the UK weather. In NYC, it was 29 degrees when I left…).

Hotels like the Grove are not exactly cheap, but they do offer a great service when you are hosting an event, conference or meeting offsite. It’s close to Heathrow (major pro!), the food is excellent, the rooms are very comfortable, the service in the conference center is impeccable, the surroundings are just beautiful and apparently the golf course is amazing. The meeting rooms all have big plasma screens so sharing a presentation is very easy without the humming of a projector in the background all day, and the wireless internet is available everywhere.

The pricing for all of this is pretty fair in my view. It is a 5-star hotel, so no, it is not cheap. But, for example, 24 hour wireless internet access is 20 British pounds. I don’t think that is that much. A full 24 hour delegate pass (including overnight room, breakfast, lunch, dinner, meeting room, coffee breaks etc), is less than 300 GBP/person. Also, very reasonable for this class of hotel. One price however completely shocked me… For a scan (and emailing you the scan), they charge 5 GBP per page! Now that is just a total rip-off I think!

No comments.

[Via GraphJam]

The experience of a lifetime? Have you always dreamt about experiencing the hassle of airtravel but without the actual travel? Then now’s your chance. Next week JetBlue offers a trip to nowhere from JFK:

“New York-based JetBlue is looking for 1,000 of its frequent flyers to show up at JFK on August 23 to check bags given to them by the airline, go through security and wait at the assigned gate for their imaginary "flight." In return, the airline is promising unspecified "giveaways," free parking and lunch.”

Free parking and lunch? I’m sure that’ll attract many frequent flyers to this event. Anyway, we all know that opening a new terminal can go totally wrong… and the new JetBlue terminal is also n°5 so they’re probably doing the right thing here. Special report from our NY correspondent to be expected? ;)

On July 1st The New York Times reported that under certain conditions it wouldn’t be necessary anymore to remove your laptop from your case when passing airport security (in the US):

“Get ready for a change. The Transportation Security Administration has given the go-ahead for passengers to use newly designed carry-on bags that will let them pass through security without having to take their laptops out for the X-ray inspection. Kip Hawley, the agency’s director, told me Monday that the T.S.A. would accept the new laptop cases as soon as they come on the market.

Two of the biggest luggage manufacturers — Pathfinder Luggage and Targus — say they are rushing to produce the new “checkpoint friendly” laptop cases and expect them to be available by late September or early October. “

Boy did that sound good! Immediately after that news followed about Targus, MobileEdge and others creating these special bags indeed.

Last update is from a few days ago. TSA is ready for ‘checkpoint friendly’ laptop bags and from August 16th they will start allowing passengers to pass through security with bags that meet the new ‘checkpoint friendly’ standard.

Since a few days though I’m wondering how much of this really is just smoke to disguise that other – and a bit more disturbing – airport security related news. Travelers laptops may be detained at border titled the Washington Post:

“Federal agents may take a traveler’s laptop or other electronic device to an off-site location for an unspecified period of time without any suspicion of wrongdoing, as part of border search policies the Department of Homeland Security recently disclosed.”

So when you combine these two news items you get: we’re about to take your laptop away from you and it would be more convenient if it’s still in a bag when we do so… you know so we can carry it to that off-site location we talked about. Traveling to the US just became even more pleasant.

In the meantime there’s an interesting discussion over on Lifehacker where Gina Trapani asked her readers what they would do to avoid laptop seizure on international trips, good stuff.

This is an update of a rant I wrote a while ago on my personal blog. It’s about Eurobonus, the Star Alliance loyalty program. Why? Because it’s a scam, I have no better word for it. I’m sorry for this is going to be a long rant, here’s the initial piece from my other blog:

“I really don’t get it. I’m a frequent flyer and as such I have an airline (or group of airlines) of choice. Simple reason, you try and get as much miles with one and not just shattered around across many different offerings. My choice? Star Alliance. The initial reason for this was because I think flying SAS to our HQ in Seattle is just the best way for me to travel, and once you made the choice you stick with the program.

This means that also when not flying SAS, I will check if there’s a reasonably priced option with Star Alliance to get to my destination and only fly with someone else if there isn’t. As a result for being loyal to Star Alliance, I’ve been Eurobonus Gold for quite a while now.

Now where is the reward? There are 2 things that bother me a lot about this so called loyalty program. First of all, these miles don’t mean much. I wanted to go to NYC with my wife in August to celebrate our wedding anniversary. I got the miles so I started looking for Eurobonus available seats on flights to NYC (and back obviously). The trip would be for 5 days or so but there was some flexibility to it. Tough luck, it’s impossible to find 2 Eurobonus seats on any Star Alliance flight to NYC… and even if there were, chances that you would find seats for the flight back is pretty much non-existent… so much for being loyal.

The second part that bothers me is the lounge…” (I want to focus on the airmiles issue a bit more so read the rest of the rant here if you want).

Last week I thought I would give it another try. I called Eurobonus this time (as I gave up on the website already) and thought that maybe they could help me out finding suitable flights back and forth to NYC anytime between now and end of October. Also, it doesn’t really matter for us what day of the week we would leave nor what day to come back as long as we could spend about 4 days in New York. Is that flexible enough?

No luck. So it really wasn’t me unable to find something on their site, there really isn’t any ticket that I could get. Oh no, there was. I could fly over Stockholm, stay overnight there and then go to Newark… which was a bit far off for me honestly. Since the reason for this trip is our wedding anniversary I figured other locations might be good as well, we’d still be spending a few days away. Barcelona? Rome? London maybe? Etc etc… no sir, we can’t really find anything for 2 people. Now if you were to buy one, then we could most certainly book a second one using your miles. To which point I answered: “you’re a nice guy, but this Eurobonus program is pretty poor”. He did admit on the phone it is extremely hard to find 2 tickets on the same flight to many of the Star Alliance destinations.

Loyalty program? Are you kidding me! If loyalty means: if you have already flown a lot with us in the past AND if you are buying a new ticket now THEN we might be able to cut you a deal on yet another ticket IF that were for the same trip…. or something like that. If that’s what loyalty means, Eurobonus is the program to go with. In the meantime I’m wondering what I should do with my airmiles right now. Can I sell them? Do I really have to start all over again with another miles program… which might not be better anyway? You tell me…

Once upon a time the Delta flight attendants were actually very nice. I think it was a flight from Vegas to Atlanta little over a year ago and everyone on the flight received champagne. Reason? Delta just got out of chapter 11 and they served champagne on every single flight in the US that day, I know as I flew with them twice that day :)

That was then. In the meantime Delta announced a billion Dollar loss (mainly due to acquisition of Northwest though) and the flight attendants are just as unfriendly as they ever were.

A few weeks ago I flew Delta again to Atlanta. It’s pretty much the only direct flight you can find from Brussels to Atlanta so that doesn’t leave you much of an option (unless you like stopovers of course). Also I was a bit unfortunate not to fly business this time. This means I was up for some of the worst in-flight entertainment systems ever, unfriendly flight assistants and chicken or pasta. And it’s not that I don’t want to fly economy, I’d fly economy on Malaysian or Singapore Airlines any time. The flight attendants on Delta could be the parents of those on Malaysian for instance.

On our way back we had a delay. The information screen said ‘On Time’ until we left, but since I was still sitting in the boarding area about an hour after we should have taken off… I figured we had a delay ;) Luckily all airlines heavily pad flight times these days so I only arrived home a little bit later than planned.

“Delta is ready when you are”. Sure. I really want to like Delta – seriously – but they do make it quite hard.

Photo credit: Jason Turnbull

I love New York. The city is so unique that I think it’s hard not to love New York… then again that’s probably what a lot of people say about Paris as well and I don’t like Paris at all really. But I digress. I was thinking the other day about certain travel rules, things you do or rather don’t do while on the road etc etc The first one I wanted to start with was related to the famous I Heart NY t-shirts. I got my own, actually got one at each trip to NY from my distinguished guests. The t-shirts themselves aren’t a problem either, just don’t wear them in New York ;)