Not as Exciting as it first seemed

these arrived in the post for my wife recently, I was quite excited to see what she had planned. sadly it seems they are placed on the bottom of a tennis racket to soften the shock moving from the racket to the wrist when the ball is struck. 

Obsessive

I saw this on someone's bag in Amsterdam recently, I consider myself quite obsessive about aircraft but this was on an entirely different level !!

bad advertising

I always forget my pieces of Mango when passing through and airport. Its a good thing Boots were there to remind me !!!!

Baby Box

This is one of the saddest things I have seen in a long time, we walked past it on a side street on the way to a resteraunt after parking the car. Its a Baby box and the idea is that if you no longer want or can care for your baby you can take it to the "box" place it inside, press the occupied button and walk away annonimously.  the occupied button puts on the heating to a set temprature and alrets a local hospital who come down to collect the baby and presumable place it into some sort of care system.

I cannot imagine what the mother must be going through to use a baby box and what "emotional baggage" for want of a much better expression both the mother and baby will carry for the rest of their lives.   

Hotel lifts in the Czech Republic

I am not sure if its some sort of local ordinance or just a local thing but all hoptel lifts in the Czech Republic have a seat in them. I have not seen that anywhere else in the world.

Its just one of those odd things you notice as you travel

On the Road

There is a perception from people who do not travel for work that it is glamourous and a little like being on holiday. A recent trip whilst unusual for its intensity completely debunked that theory.

My Alarm went off at 05:30 on Monday morning and the taxi picked me up at 06:20 for the short journey to the airport. After passing through a crowded security point I was in the crowded departure lounge. To keep fares low Airlines have encouraged airports to pass on their costs to the passengers via retail opportunities, of which the airport retains a portion of retailer’s revenue. Airports therefore keep you in the lounge for as long as possible to maximise your time to spend money. With Most people traveling hand baggage space is limited on the aircraft and if you are in the last half of the queue then you risk your hand baggage being placed in the hold and a delay at the other end waiting for it to come around the belt. At peak times the departure lounges become overcrowded and passengers are released to the gates ahead of the planned gate time to ease congestion. This means that like most people I spend about 15 minutes looking at the departure screens waiting for the gate to appear at which point my fellow passenger and myself engage in a race to the gate to be in the first half of the queue. 

At 08:10 my Ryanair flight departs to Prague arriving one hour thirty minutes later. The office is on the airport a short walk from the terminal. At the end of the day I walked to the hotel a short distance from the office and still on the airport. The Marriott is a regular stop for me and I know my way round the menu quite well….. it does not change often and I am on my own. Its back to the room where it’s a fairly standard set of international TV news channels on the TV, the local channels in Czech Polish and German are available but for English speakers its all news. At This point I am bound to say Netflix is a god send, load up the laptop with programs at home and I have something to watch on the road. The next day is a repeat of the last, the short walk to the office and back to the Hotel …. Menu and TV.    

Wednesday morning is an Early start, my flight is at 7AM but sleeping in a Hotel in the airport carpark means that I don’t have to get up until 5:30 as I am already checked in. I am down for breakfast at 6AM and checked out of the hotel by 6:15. The next stop is Milan where I am speaking at a conference…. At the airport, the Hotel is a short walk from the terminal but still on the airport. I arrive at 9:00 just as the conference is starting. At the end of the day I have dinner and a couple of beers with a business contact and then its bed.  

Thursday morning is another early start with a short walk back to the airport for the 7:30AM flight to Frankfurt where I have a meeting with a customer ….. at the Airport, the meeting finished at 3PM and I have a couple of hours hanging around in the lounge before its time for the flight back to London. At 7:30PM I walk out of the airport at London city this being the first time since 6:30 on Monday I have left airport property or not been on an aircraft.  I eventually got home at just after 9PM.

Not lost in translation

I saw this on the menu at the Prage Airport cafe. Its a walk up and order sort of place so I was able to see the food and I can confirm that the pork slurry looked as bad as it sounded.

The last of a dynasty

its not a great photo but this is the newest Korean Air B747-8i and the last one they had on order. it was delivered in early August 2017 without fanfare but is in fact the last passenger 747 to be built. the B747 has spanned my life time and if I am honest is my favourite aircraft, a design classic of all time. its very sad to think of it not being in production any more and I suppose therefore is only a few years away from dissapearing from the skies. 

WTF

what the hell are Tandori lamb Popsicals......

Lost in Translation

clearly their claim is not true, I can see 7 of the bottles in this photograph and I bet there were more in the stock room

the CAA ... a healthy workplace

This was the counter display at the UK Civil Aviation Authority cafe. clearly they are keen to ensure that there staff have access to as much over the counter medication as is humanly possible

Barra

I took the opportunity to tick an item off my bucket list this summer and took the flight from Glasgow to Barra Beach in the Outer Hebrides with a colleague. It’s the only place in world where a commercial aircraft lands on a beach. I was incredibly lucky insomuch as the weather was good for the flight and the Captain decided to take a decidedly none standard route. after take-off, we flew down Loch Lomond through the national park before turning left down the Great Glen over Arrochar, Tobermory and Oban before crossing the sea to Barra, all at only a 1000 fleet altitude. We had three hours on the island so had arranged for a tour with a local who originated in Birmingham. On the way, back we took a more direct route past Fingal’s cave Oban and down the Holy Loch. It was a fantastic day out and is now up there as my all time number one flight ever having displaced the Singapore Airlines flight where I had an amazing view of Kazakhstan whilst listening to 101 hits from the 1980’s on the IFE to second place.

Free WiFi

on the way back to the airport from the conference I passed this person waiting in a car park on the airport approach,

Lost in translation

I was at an industry conference in Thailand recently. the description on the salad bar possibly has one to many words .... despite a large search of the buffet I was unable to locate the unheathy salad bar. this reminded me of my time with the IATA Standard ground handling contract working group. we had a clause to contrcat suitable equipment until someone pointed out that it was unlikely you would contrcat unsuitable equipment.

Offiice move

We have just moved offcies in Prague, this was a picture taken during the IT fit out. Every desk needed 4 connections,  I have no idea how the IT guys knew what to connect where

Long Haul Flying

I seem to have done a lot of long haul flying so far this year and June is looking like a month with less flying and I am really looking forward to it. I enjoy the traveling and seeing the different cultures on the companies dollar, even with economy class flying we still tend to use reasonable hotels. I see a lot of things that most people don’t get to see and I think that it gives me a different perspective

This trip was fairly typical albeit a bit longer than normal. I started off on Friday evening with a BA flight direct to Bangkok the only noticeable thing about the flight was flying over “the Stan’s” and India at night it was dark and looking out of the window I had a really good view of the stars and could clearly see the milky way, I tried to take a photograph but the camera was not up to it. After arrival in Bangkok I grabbed a cab across to the domestic airport and watched the aircraft for the day.  There was a small kid of maybe about 4 or 5 sleeping on a blanket on the floor of the observation deck, his mother appeared to be a cleaner and came over to play with him during her break. I was there for 5 hours and the kid was there before I was there and still there after I left. Bangkok is a city I have been to many times before so I tend not to do the tourist stuff anymore but I do love my aircraft.

The conference hotel was a new one and the reception was on the 23^rd floor, I am not sure what was on the first 21 floors because it was not in the same entrance and the lift went directly to floor 23. The conference was on the 22^nd floor and I was staying on the 45^th floor. Apart from one visit into the shopping mall on Sunday I did not come down below the 22^nd floor until Wednesday lunchtime.  From my window on the 45^th floor I could see a small shanty town with families living in huts made form corrugated iron.  They did seem to have electricity from somewhere I have no idea about running water. I live a very privileged life.   

When I left, With a 24 hour pass from my wife, I had planned a brief visit to Jakarta as there were a lot of aircraft there I had not seen before. I had slightly misjudged the distance and Jakarta is three hours flying south of Bangkok and more or less equidistant between Thailand and Australia. Being at the Eastern edge of the time zone it went dark earlier than I had anticipated and at 6PM the shuttle bus ride to the Hotel was in darkness. Every junction had a traffic policeman on it standing in the middle waving there arms around, there were no street lights and they were wearing no high visibility clothing. I could barely see them and I have no idea how they did not get run down. The hotel was nice and deliberately near the airport. The next morning I was back to the airport early as they apparently had a good viewing deck. The whole of humanity was at the airport, lots of people and lots of cases it was fascinating to watch. Indonesia is a huge country with a very spread out population. Aviation has taken off massively on the last couple of years and many people are flying for the first time. you could see this with many of them stopping and taking selfies at the aircraft side. Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world but there did not on the face of it seem to be the same restrictions on women that you so often see in the gulf. Heads were covered but there were no veils or Burkas.

With my 24 hours up it was back to Bangkok for the last night and another airport hotel before the long 12 and a half hour flight back to the UK arriving week and two hours after I left.                      

I am Daniel Blake

I have just watched a very powerful film, Daniel Blake, It is directed by Ken Loach and 30 years ago this film would have made headlines in a  “Cathay come home way” but in today’s self cantered world it has not even reached a level of comment in British society. An incredibly powerful way is shows how hard it is for the people at the bottom of the pile and how uncaring the system is. I was almost in tears watching it and it should have been put on a 9PM slot on one of the main TV channels. But the world does not work like that anymore.

Incredibly sad and I don’t know what we can do to change the system.                  

Having googled it a bit more I discover that it won the Palme D'or at the 2016 Cannes Film Festival and it did make the UK press. rather predictably the right wing press said it was not a true representation and the left wing press said look at how bad things are, what can be done. 

Lost in Translation

I saw the above sign in Oxford Street in London, It begs the question about what constitutes formal Denim

LA Fittness

After my day off in LA I caught the shuttle back to the airport, it was a perfect LA Saturday mid 20C's C clear sky's .... just about as perfect as you could get. we passed an LA Fitness Gym, it was packed with people on running machines looking out of the windows over the car park as they worked out. what I found Ironic was the fact that beyond the car park was a public park which would have been so much more fun that a soulless running machine ... guys get out of the air conditioning, smell the grass and live a little      

The Mighty LAX

A few weeks ago I was on an insane round the world trip with meetings in Singapore and Hawaii in the same week, both of which are a long way from London. on the way back I treated myself to a day in Los Angeles.

The view from the aircraft as you arrive in LA is amazing, the urban landscape stretches as far as the eye can see.  there are not many cities I can recall where there is so much urban sprawl and all of it low rise.

at the entrance to Los Angeles Airport the three letters of the Airport code LAX as displayed as an artwork. Los Angeles Airport is one of a select few airports which is known throughout the world by its three letter code. I can only think of New York "JFK" and Los Angeles "LAX" off the top of my head   

Lost in Translation

I found this advert in a lift in Singapore, I assume what they consider slippers is not what I would consider slippers.

Been away for a while

Its all been a bit mad at work and I have also not had the drive to make any blog entries recently. I will try to get back into it over the next few months, Its not because I don't travel any more .... quite the contrary but I dint seem to see as many things that pique my interest these days