sorry i have been away

I realise I have done a lot recently but none of it was really world shattering or reportable; but it must have been time consuming since my last entry into this blog was August 2007. I will try and renew my efforts to record my travels in 2008 starting with a great comment from the Captain of the VLM flight into Manchester from Antwerp this morning:

"The weather in Manchester is rainy like it always is"

Give the man a job with BBC weather team !

Gossip

Had one of those "people watching" or should it be "listening" experiences at the Brussels airport sheraton this week. 3 middle aged ladies - they all tend to be of a "certain age" on Amercian airlines long haul spent 90 mins gossiping about all their crew mates and Pilots. My favourite comment was:

" Last week I went to Mexico with a Captain who had never been there and neither had the co-pilot... I would never fly with captain, as a passenger, if he didn't know where he was going"


mmmh How as a passenger are you going to find out - "good morning ladies & gentleman this is your captain speaking for your flight to London, unfortunately I have no idea where I am going............ ?

It's those middle east stamps again

Well I had my second dodgy passport check today - coming off a Leeds Bradford to Southampton flight i.e. domestic, I was asked by a zealous immigration control officer to show my passport. His hair nearly stood on end when he saw my 25+ UAE (various)/Oman stamps in my passport + 2 chinese visas (expired) + assorted SE asian stamps + 1 from Canada and 1 from US. Demanded immediately to know what my job was (still not plucked up the courage to say more than Chemicals), who I worked for, where their head office was and why was I travelling.
of course when you say travelling to our HQ in Lyndhurst (the truth).....he gets really suspicious.......but then just waves you on your way !
they really amuse me..........................you could see him itching to stop me.....but then the story was so incredible it had to be the truth! They're going to be far worse when they all get uniforms !

Where have people been ?

As the nation heads to the airport for the annual summer exodus, it still stuns me the amount of hand luggage and "banned" articles people still try and take on planes. It's over a year since the 1 hand bag + plastic bags of liquids & gel came in yet it seems so many people have not learnt the rules. yes your water bottles, coke bottles, bottles of perfume, flasks of tea, picnic cutlery,suncream etc etc will be taken off you Culminated tonight with some reporter on BBC tv tonight explaining the rules again.
please can everyone wake up - last year's regulations have not gone away and still apply and now following the latest attacks, you will need to park your car a long way from the terminal.
OK so please concentrate, so us regular travellers can try and get our flights ! Sorry for being so grumpy !

Oslo airport

As part of my company's latest acquistions in Norway, made my first trip through Oslo airport- a couple of observations:

• be prepared to walk, when you land they make you walk all the way to the fruthermost part of the airport to go through passport control and then walk the complete length of terminal to get to the exit.
• the train service to and from Oslo is great.
• Don't try and catch a plane at 6:30 am on saturday morning in late May/ June - It's complete chaos. I may have not slept for 48 hours but my perception was if I'hadn't been able to check in using a KLM e-machine- I would not have made made my flight.
• It wins my award for Airport with most unpronounceable destinations - any Norwegian internal flight !

Eastern Airways

Sorry for the lack of posts over the last month, I have been working hard on a project in southern England and Brussels. This means except for one flight my last 9 has been on Eastern Airways. I guess it is testament to their steady, on time services that Eastern run that I have had very little to post over past month. I could start writing horror stories about FlyBe delays and cancellations, frustrated tearful passengers etc. ; but actually I have spent every little time in airports because I have been arriving closer and closer to my Eastern departure time, and so I spending very little tome in departure lounges. That now means next Monday's flight will be a disaster !
One thing about Eastern they fly Jetstream 41s - I always try and sit in seat 6c next to the emergency exit (most room). Every time they brief us it's the same -pull the door in, turn the door on its side, throw it out FORWARDS, no other airline to my knowledge has ever specified FORWARDS, but no one can tell why.........

BA Crew standards

Went to Abu Dhabi for the 5 days this week using British Airways - I was stunned by the difference between the 2 crews.
Going out on the Monday, we were an hour late due technical difficulties, but the crew from the purser downwards were incredibly helpful - they regularly explained what was going on and did their best to make everyone comfortable. As a Goldcard holder travelling further back in the plane than normal, I was still picked for exemplary service including extra G&Ts, but generally the service was excellent, particularly to those travelling with younger children.
Coming back to London overnight last night, the crew were from the other end of the spectrum - zero service ethic and treated us like cattle.
BA will never succeed with such inconsistent approach to customer service.

Marked man

Interesting experience at Southampton airport @ 0615 this morning - boarding my flight to Amsterdam, a person from immigration control asked to see my passport- I was then questioned as to whether I was flying onwards from amsterdam and what my business there was?
Having flicked through my stamp pages he then commented - "you have a lot of Middle east stamps in your passport sir" - why is that and what is your line of business ?
I have to admit all sort of answers that would not have got me on my plane, so I simply said - "I like visiting there and I work in Chemicals" to see whether I would get further reaction. He grunted a thank you and moved on to the next passenger.
So perhaps I am "a marked man" because of passport stamps ?

Change of carrier - can other countries keep track?

Those of us ex BA Connect travellers now with flybe are becoming increasingly confused as to actually which airline we are travelling.
Last Tuesday caught the flybe flight to Dusseldorf fromSouthampton - this route was announced before the BA Connect takeover. They have used mainly Dash 8 sprinkled with BAE146s on the routing, so I was somewhat shocked to suddenly find myself on a BA embraer 145 with obviously a BA crew on board; despite their uniforms, confirmed by the "why don't you check out our cheap flights on http://www.ba.com..... www.flyba.com.......I mean wwww.flybe.com ....",well she got there in the end.
( I actually asked the hostesses what it was like now they had crossed over to the "dark side" - they said it was ok but were shocked at the lack of attention to detail and disorganisation - they seem amazed that Flybe managed to operate a service at all).
Anyway on arrival at dusseldorf, it was the ground crew that amused me you could see all these Germans trying to work out what BA plane from Southampton was doing in that slot. Much shrugging of shoulders, mystified looks at paperwork, should they provide a valet service etc. anyway they figured it out in the end and got us on the bus without too much delay.

Update 21/4 - since I wrote this the last three domestic flights I have taken with Flybe have all used BA Connect Embraers - the crew still remain amazed at Flybe's disorganisation.

Diverse Paths

Now my kids are teenagers, the conversations we seem to have are far more interesting - this evening over family tea I was trying to illustrate though we may go through the same experiences in life we turn out in very different way.
For example I went to school with George Monbiot, probably one of the leading Green activists in this country, well known Guardian columnist and TV pundit. George and I won the natural history prize at our boarding school when we were aged approx 11. To procure the prize, we managed to turn an old 1940's enamel bath (recently saved from the destruction of the communal bathroom I used for the first 2 years of prep school career) into a faithful reproduction of our school pond, complete with lillipads, tadpoles, mud etc. I remember George being very disappointed by the fact that he could not keep fish in the bath, because a science teacher said the water was not oxygenated enough.
So George grows up, travels the world, nearly dies at least twice in pursuing his quest to show us the true green agenda and how we are destroying our planet through Global warming etc. Meanwhile yours truely, grows up , travels the world for the 3rd biggest oil company in the world for 15 years and now I work for the second biggest chemical company.........it must be worth a Channel 4 documentary...........