Sign o' the Times...

Well, isn’t this holiday just the very wealth of new experiences? Not only did we fly here in convoy, but I’ve been the victim of an ‘age-related’ insult for the very first time from someone outside of my immediate family.

Yesterday, we were stood at reception early doors, waiting to book one of the ‘a la carte’ restaurants (don’t you know) and probably to complain about something, knowing me. Reception has two desks, each staffed by two. We were waiting in the single queue for the right desk and after some time, one of the positions became free. We started forward, but before you could say ‘Uncle Albert’ some chap has dived in in front of us. I politely inform him that we were ahead of him in the queue and goes right off on one, calling me an ‘Old Pratt’ and muttering further under his breath to his wife. I turn and look at this, make no comment and go back about my business. I’m in the middle of discussing the pros and cons of Italian vs Mexican when this fella is back at my elbow.

Now what I haven’t mentioned, but what you might have inferred by the Uncle Albert reference, is that this guy is at least 10, maybe 15 years my senior and bears a striking resemblance to how Captain Birdseye must look nowadays, having fallen on hard times and been replaced by the far more…, erm, very similar, Captain Igloo.

It seems like his wife has told him to behave. Oh how I know that feeling…

“My apologies, fella,” he says, “it’s just, I’m on me holidays, see?”

I look at him, perplexed.

He even does that ‘neck thing’ Uncle Albert does when he feels insulted. “Alright then, don't accept me apology!”

“Erm… I didn’t not accept your apology…” I offer.

“It was the way you snarled at me!”

I’m starting to enjoy this more and more and less and less at the same time, which makes me feel a little dizzy, truth be told. “Listen, fella, if I’d snarled at you, you’d know about it, ok?”

At this point, I’m reminded of a certain afternoon playing tennis in West Wickham as a teenager, when I’d asked a younger kid who was annoying me if he had any doubt I could change his life forever (it sounded good in the film I'd lifted it from); the scorn from my friends and the damage it did to my relationship with one of them in particular stays with me to this day.

I try to lighten the mood:

“Sheesh [I actually say it], if this is what you’re like on your holidays, what are you like after a bad day down the market?”

He looks at me blankly as I walk away, neither of us quite sure who’s won this unnecessary little skirmish.

My fellow passengers clapping wheels-down in Heraklion, mindless of the fact that it could all still go horribly wrong...

Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere...

And so, here I am a little down the road from Heraklion.  The weather is good, hot and sunny, and I am turning a rather fetching shade of brown.  I am certain this will make me look extremely suave when I go to the IBC TV Technology trade show in three weeks’ time, and business will boom as a direct result. Oh yes…

Not much has happened over the past few days, just relaxing and finding our way around. The resort is nice and the food ok, although the internet sucks badly.  It honestly seems like there is a 10MB limit per hour, and its cable access only in the rooms.  Luckily I brought my spare WiFi router with me. I have daily attempts from the people around the pool to log on, so I have changed the network name to 'sodoffmybandwidth'. Always gets a laugh when someone nearby comments on it.

The all-inclusive booze is also acceptable and not quite the battery acid those who have visited Egypt may have experienced.  Sadly here, we don’t have Jonny Wolker, Gordoon’s gin, Fineland vodka, or other such rip-offs, whose similarity to the brands they are aping goes no further than the reasonably faithful facsimile labels and a nod towards bottle shape.  Here’s an example of what I’m talking about, courtesy of Bartosz Lewicki’s post on the Multi Communications' blog:

http://www.multipr.pl/en/cms/blog/447,never-look-a-poured-drink-in-the-label/ 

 

As Bartosz observes, these drinks usually do not boast the flavour of the drink they are copying, but the aroma.  This means that within minutes of leaving the bottle, you are left with a small plastic cup filled will industrial-strength solvent topped-up with a splash of the local version of the mixer of your choice.

While the bars around the complex limit their selection to local beer (had better, had a LOT worse) and wines, the [I wanna take you to a] Day Bar and it’s cunningly-named counterpart, the (wait for it) Night Bar, do serve such bastardisations and go the extra mile to combine them into brightly coloured pseudo-cocktails with only a passing resemblance to their autographically-altered, universally-known namesakes.  And as I sit, supping an Ouzou (sic) Sunrise, I’m reminded of Sundays at Bromley Market as a kid, staring in awe at the gamut of Fila, Sergio Tacchini and Ellesse fakes (now known as 'replicas' - imitation being the sincerest form of flattery, after all) flying out of the back of a white Transit as the seller blasts early House music from his Panasonix boom-box.

Good Times…

Stop Dreaming of the Quiet Life...

Those of you who play online video games will know what a ‘Random’ is.  For those of you who boast lives, Randoms are people playing the same game at the same time as you, who are not part of your circle of friends, or in your ‘party’.  Hardcore gamers flatly refuse to play with Randoms, largely because they either don’t know the rules of the game, the etiquette or just plain refuse to observe them.  Randoms are only one stage higher up the food-chain than ‘Noobs’, people who have only just started to play the game and who are also guilty of these same sins.  In the world of online gaming, it’s fairly easy to deal with these phenomena; if you’re in charge of the game itself (the lobby), you can preclude them from joining the game by removing them from the lobby (known as ‘boooting’ them – literally kicking them off the server).  If you’re not ‘lucky enough’ (erm…) to be a Mod(erator), you can turn take out your frustration on them by just killing them, even if they’re on your team.  And, if it all gets too much, you can simply Rage-Quit – leave the game before it finishes and try to find another lobby without the Riff-Raff.

But Noobs and Randoms are not restricted to online gaming.  Oh no.  And I guess you have an inkling of where I’m going with this.

I am currently sat on a charter flight to Heraklion, next to my wife and son, having just passed over Budapest.  Ahead of me, two weeks of Sun, Sea and, well, that’s probably about it, to be honest - I am travelling with the missus, after all (only joking, sweetie :-* ).  And I’m already thinking I’m going to need every second of it.

All the rules that you learn, either the hard way, or through reading Rick & Anthony’s book or watching Up in The Air, every trick of the trade you pick up on the road goes sailing out of the window when it’s time to go on a package holiday.

The first thing you miss is the online check-in.  This is exacerbated by the Tour Company’s requirement (in Poland, at least), that you turn up 3 hours before departure in order to stand in a queue [the HORROR!] to collect your tickets, hotel vouchers etc. from the agent in the airport.  It gets worse; next, you don’t get to wear your smug look as you glide past the great unwashed to the Baggage-Drop Only desk, or even better, the Status desks.  You have to stand in another queue…

Forgive me, I’ve just broken out in a cold sweat at the memory…

No, you have to join the throng. You’re in with the Randoms.  And you’re in with the Noobs.  And no amount of Privilege Miles can help you now.

OK, ok.  I know that not everyone is lucky enough to be able to travel regularly and so cannot be au-fait with all of the vagaries of navigating an airport, but surely my Frequent Flyer card  is the real-world equivalent of online Mod status, isn’t it?  Surely, when the guy in front of me sets off the metal detector 3 times because he hasn’t removed his belt, then hasn’t taken the coins out of his pocket, then is found to have WWII AMMUNITION IN HIS CARRY-ON (ceremonial, for sure, but WT actual F?), I should be allowed to boot him, right?  When a bunch of lads are sitting in the bar, necking their third beer at 9.30am, turning the air blue whilst all around them sit families with small children, I should be able to call in a Chopper-Gunner over their position and spawn-kill the living shit out of them, shouldn’t I?  And when, the very moment the Fasten Seatbelts sign goes off, literally everyone gets up and starts groping for the luggage bins, rubbing their hairy beer bellies in my face, I should be able to rage-quit and find another server, clearly.

Tell me, why do the Randoms insist on spending the whole flight in the aisle?

Today, I saw something I’ve never seen before.  We are flying in convoy.  Two planes left Poznan at the same time, both bound for Heraklion.  Now, how difficult would it have been for the authorities to ask everyone at check-in: “Good morning sir, are you a Frequent-Flyer?” Everyone that said yes and could produce some form of expensive-coloured proof could travel on the first plane (and I’ll even let the families join them, as long as the FF agrees to keep them in check).  Everyone else goes on the second plane.  That way, we get to enjoy the conditions to which we’ve become accustomed and Mr RyanAir gets the Standing-Room Only flights he’s been dreaming of for so long.

And I won’t have to endure the inevitable pathetic cheering and applause when we land in about an hour.

I need to buy another beer…

SFO Far, (Not) So Good...

The Corporate carrier of my company is United Airlines (part of the Star Alliance Group, luckily). My boss insists on travelling Business Class with them wherever possible, not because of the high levels of service, but simply because due to the almost guaranteed delay after boarding he can usually watch most, if not all of one of the on-board movies before the plane even pushes back from the gate and then get a full 8 hours sleep before the breakfast which is served 2 hours before landing).

United is a horrible airline.  Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.  The planes are old and threadbare, much like the cabin crew.  Seriously, United is the B&Q of the airline industry.  I have never encountered anyone on deck who wasn’t at least 15 years older than me (and I’m [cough] 43 this year); they are all extremely crabby, unless you happen to be travelling with a wailing bairn, in which case they turn into SuperNanny (but without the fetishistic upsides, unfortunately).  I was unfortunate enough to be stuck on the tarmac on a United 747 for 3 hours on my last trip to California a couple of months back.  From the moment we got on board, it was sweltering and after some time the Captain comes over the tannoy to tell us that there’s some kind of fault with the anchoring electrics, so they can’t get any ‘air’ to us at present, but as soon as we push back, everything will be ok. So we sit there.  And we sit there.  A Middle-Eastern lady starts demanding she be re-seated, because we're in the rows next to the galley and it's somewhat enclosed, and she has Claustrophobia.  The cabin-crew deal with this expertly by telling her she should have thought about her condition before buying a ticket and there are no other options for her except to get off the plane, and if she did that, United would probaly fine her for delaying the flight. 

This seems to trigger the petite, middle-aged lady in the window seat next to me to start practicing her yoga; heels up on the headrest of the seat in front of her, crunching forward.  All very impressive, it takes my mind off or our predicament.

Now I don’t know much about yoga, but I can see she’s gone through the motions a couple of times before she gives up so I know she’s beginning to feel as frustrated as me.  In fact, judging by the way she reacted to the actions of the cabin crew, she was edging perilously close to Dhalsim territory:

  

We exchange pleasantries, and it’s at this point that our 747-400 starts pushing back from the gates. Almost immediately, the sound we hear is exactly this:

I swear I could feel the muffled thumps of Han Solo banging the console up in the cockpit.

After a moment, the Captain comes back on the tannoy and tells us: “So, folks, it looks like we have another electrical failure. We're going to push back to the gate and then we're going to come up with something”.  Oh great.  Perhaps they haven't isloated the reverse power coupling?  Maybe Artoo can do something with it... (yes, I know this was C3PO's line...)

We limp back to the gate and sit there for another age; babies screaming, cabin crones cooing over them but neglecting the rest of us.  I turn to Dhalsim and offer my opinion that our aircraft is, in fact, dead, (is no more, has ceased to be, is expired, etc. etc.).  Moments later, the Captain is back again, cheerily assuring us that everything is A-OK, Yes-siree. What a super airplane we have under us, oh yes.  Ever-so-safe.  Really very safe.  Oh yes.  A very safe plane indeed. In fact, it was his most favourite, safest plane in the whole United fleet.  Mm-hmm.  This message he repeated every 15 minutes until everyone was choosing which role from ‘Lost’ that they would be assuming the next time their feet touched Mother Earth.  I bagsied Sawyer.

 

So obviously, I was pleased for Captain Platitude.  I mean, to me, the plane interior looked marginally worse than the Clark’s Coaches that would take some of my best friends and most hated classmates home after school in the 80s, but who am I to question the knowledge of a United Flight Captain?  So I naturally fell under his spell.  That said, I first made sure I first located the whereabouts of the alcohol, the medicine, the Air Marshal and the Class A narcotics.

Sadly, all of this preparation was for naught as we landed safely and soundly in San Francisco. Shame, as I was looking forward to finding and disappointing Freckles.

San Francisco, what an approach.

I just hope the passengers on Asiana Flight 214 did not have the same cinematic experience as I did this time.  An my A380, we had a camera in the tail stabilizer which they switch on for landing (and take off, of course). When you come into San Francisco, the approach is ridiculously low; you can almost smell the salt and you’re almost on first name terms with the fish in the bay.  Now on the ground, the A380 looks like a bloated puffer-fish, but in the air it’s even worse.  Coming into SFO with the memory of what occurred a few weeks previously, you have the visible closeness to the water from the side windows made worse by your knowledge that you’re the top deck of a double decker aircraft, so the water is actually a damned sight closer than it appears. Then you look at the monitor which shows the runway literally just starting to become visible. It must be miles away still…

Forget the scant disregard for the 'no electronics during landing rule, and take a look at this.  The whole video is pretty cool, but you start to get an idea of what I'm talking about at around the 14 minute mark (oh, and you get a quick flash of the view from the tail-fin camera too).

Ho Lee Fuk…

Like a kid in a Sweet-Shop.

It’s not that my flights over the 60-odd months prior to my latest career change earlier this year had been infrequent; quite the opposite.  I’d certainly seen the insides of more aircraft than the above-average John in that period and am probably more familiar with the various nooks and crannies at Berlin’s Tegel airport than many guys are with those in their own kitchens.  But according to the various airlines around the world, I was a mere pleb; the ‘Air Miles’ I’d accrued, albethey substantial, were spread across several alliances so I’d never managed to poke my head above the first upgrade level.

Apart from with Air Berlin, that is.   I started using them wherever I could on my travels, mainly because they had a very convenient and cost effective Berlin Tegel – Düsseldorf route, but also because I was developing a minor hankering for the computer animated female cabin attendant who gave the security briefing on the drop-down TV screens prior to take off (it was the coquettish half-chuckle in her voice as she told me she hoped I enjoyed my flight).  As a result, I managed to attain Silver card status.  At the time, Air Berlin was still regarded as a low-cost airline, but because of its popularity and generally good service levels, it was later accepted into the British Airways-led One World alliance.  However, it was clear that Air Berlin was the ‘poor relation’ at this family gathering and it was soon announced that their ‘TopBonus’ Frequent Flyer programme, whilst being assumed into the One World alliance’s, would suffer the same kind of devaluation enjoyed by the Polish Zloty in the mid-nineties. One couldn’t even get into the One World airport lounges with a Silver TopBonus card, despite Air Berlin having built a number of very basic facilities of their own at their hubs around Germany.  The amount of noses I was looked down at as I tried to worm my way into the midst of these toffs defies belief.  Bloody snobs!

But a couple of weeks ago, my Miles and More Silver card arrived in the post.  This is the result of travelling almost exclusively with Lufthansa and their Star Alliance partners in my new role.  The need to visit numerous customers in pan-European locations (often back-toback), coupled with several trips from my European base to my company’s HQ in California, zipped me up the M&M ladder and halfway towards their Gold status lickety-split.

And so it came to pass that last Friday saw me clambering onto the top deck of one of Lufthansa’s A380 Superjumbos, thanks in no small part to the M&M points I’d accrued on the 35 flights I’d taken since the end of April. 

I assume that regular travelers in Business Class can spot us noobs a mile off.  They (we) must be the ones with the massive goofy grins on our faces as we turn left on entering the aircraft, climb the stairs on a 747 or walk the upper jetway to board an A380.  We probably fiddle incessantly with the seat reclining mechanism and end up perpendicular to the rest of the boarding passengers as they stow their carry-ons.  The novice Business Class passenger will almost certainly chug his or her (but most likely ‘his’; ladies do have a certain amount more finesse in these and all other areas, generally speaking) complimentary glass of champagne prior to take-off and be craning off his flat-bed to get the attention of the cabin crew so that they can refill his flute before it’s time to bring the seatbacks up, stow the tables and fasten the seatbelts.

I’ve flown Business Class long-haul a few times now and I still enjoy and appreciate the difference to cattle-class as much as I did the first time.  So much so, that I usually don’t sleep in order to miss as little of the experience as possible.  Sad, isn’t it?

Actually, to be perfectly honest, I still really enjoy the travelling as much as I did nearly 20 years ago when I took my first train to Warsaw for a National English Teachers’ Congress.  I was always interested in planes as a kid and I still find them incredibly beautiful objects today.  A lot of the guys I know who travel see the perks of the job as being the food, the exotic locations and so on.  Some I could name (but won’t, don’t worry) enjoy having the chance to give the good news to as many of the local female population as possible.  And don’t get me wrong, I appreciate where they’re coming from (apart from that last lot, obviously, darling… :-/ )

But for me, one of the biggest perks is the travelling itself.  After all, how many people get to go to work on a 300M dollar piece of engineering genius?

Will these get me some Mile-High action?

....The Next Generation?

So, I guess it would be good to start with who and why…

As a noob in my industry, I would watch in awe as the commercial guys would bowl into our building like they owned the place, bringing with them a welcome blast of Blighty to the little Polish back-wood where I then found myself.  All of them were larger than life characters, swashbuckling ‘road-warriors’ as Richard Quest of CNN fame would call them, (although that epithet belonged to Mad Max without question, as far as I was concerned).  I would sit on the periphery as they recounted stories of their time on the road, whom they’d encountered, how much it had cost them (or rather, how much it had cost the company) and for how long each of the parties involved had been unable to walk straight after the event.

For as long as I could remember, I’d wanted to be able to travel on business and some 5 years after the career change that catapulted me into the clouds for the first time, I finally feel I can officially call myself a frequent flyer, although I’ve certainly not reached the heady heights of those guys who so inspired me nearly ten years ago.   In fact, it’s mainly thanks to two of these characters that I sit here writing this. Messrs. Anthony Smith-Chaigneau and Richard J. Smith had penned the tome Please Step Aside, I'm A Frequent Flyer, which even as a rookie already spoke to me in so many ways.  What I aim to do with this blog is to pick up their baton (and hopefully, they won’t see it as me, through gritted teeth, growling: “Give. Me. That. F***ing. BATON!”), and add my tales to those they have already so eloquently documented.

You see, unlike those (no names mentioned) who have been there, done that and received the complimentary ergonomic wrap-around neck cushion and travel socks combo, I haven’t yet enjoyed the pleasures of a ‘double-upgrade’ to First Class; my Star Alliance card is merely Silver, not Gold, or Platinum, or Graphite, or whatever.  I have not been whisked to or from the apron in a chauffeur-driven limo and I still get frowned at by the people on the right-hand side of the Business & Upper class lounge lobbies.  But my time will come.  And unlike those other bloggers out there, I’m taking you with me…

It will be you that I gurn at when I get that upgrade to Business for no reason whatsoever, you with whom I share photos of my food, my champagne, my particularly pert Cabin Attendant (Hi Jose!).  And it will be you whom I turn to for consolation when I’m delayed. Or my luggage goes missing. Again. (And finally turns up in Frankfurt having missed its connection, despite the nice but ever-so-slightly illiterate ground staff at SFO telling me that it had definitely arrived and must have been picked up by another passenger by mistake…)

[…and breathe]

I am, and this is, Frequent Flyer 2: The Next Generation.  I am Jean-Luc Picard (Beverly! PLEASE!), to my mentors’ Kirk and Spock (I’ll leave them to fight over who’s who, but those of you who know them, feel free to share your thoughts!).  I want to share with you the highs and lows (although mainly highs, let’s be fair. Life’s for living, however vicariously, right?).

Thanks for reading this first epistle.  I hope you’ll stay with me.

Have plenty.

M