Athens Olympic Torch Relay "The Survey Part 2"

On the 11^th April the day after returning from Cairo I was back at Heathrow again this time for our flight to Delhi where we arrived seven and a half hours after leaving London. On arrival and having heard so many stories about the food and drink causing “issues” with ones digestive system I asked the crew for two litre bottles of water for my stay in India. We arrived at the hotel at about midnight with a pickup booked for 9am or 3:30am London time. The following morning our meeting at the airport was similar to the one in Cairo just with a different type of tea but just as much eye rolling by our Indian customs agent. The only other thing I remember was random cows on the urban roads during the drive back to the airport and me thinking “so this really happens in India”  When this finished we were back to the hotel for a couple of hours before meeting our country manager again for a meal and the trip back to the airport. We arrived at the airport again at 10PM for our midnight flight to London and were greeted by the news that the flight was overbooked and were we prepared to volunteer for a downgrade from business to premium economy. As a sweetener there was £500 of BA travel vouchers on offer. I asked if there was a chance of an upgrade to First Class and was greeted by a Smile. Thinking of the yet to be booked family holiday I immediately volunteered my colleague and I for the downgrade on the understanding that if we were not needed and space was available we would be upgraded to First Class. My colleague spent much time in the lounge moaning at me for volunteering us both but was quite happy when we were approached at the boarding gate with two first class boarding cards. On board it we were personally escorted to our seats and offered a set of “pyjamas” for the journey a quick trip into the toilet to get changed and I emerge in my white suit looking like I am a forensic officer in a police drama. The departure was just after midnight and with the aid of the first class duvet I slept most of the way back to London.

 

 

Over the next couple of weeks I visited Stockholm, Helsinki and Berlin for the scoping meeting s before finding myself back at the airport for the next long haul trip. This time we were covering off Tokyo Seoul and Beijing. So on a Saturday morning I found myself back at Heathrow for the flight to Tokyo. After an uneventful 11 hour flight we arrived at 9AM on a Sunday morning. With no meetings until Monday we had time to kill. Our first discovery was that our Tri-band phones did not work in Japan so we were out of communication with the rest of the world. We agreed that we would first go down to the airport we would be using for a quick look and then go into town. My colleague said I will fix a cab but I thought it would be much more fun to take the subway, having read so much about how busy the subway is I just wanted to try it. The fist and biggest issue is navigating the map. The photo that starts this piece gives some idea of what you are faced with. There is no English translation so the first thing was to work out which station we were in and mark it on our paper map. Then we needed to find out where the airport was which we eventually did. With this marked it was as easy as navigating around London. With this done we then moved onto buying a ticket. The machines had no English translation and our Japanese was sadly lacking however cleverly the map indicated how many yen we would need so it was a case of feeding the machine the coins and waiting for the print out. The Ticket inspectors realising we were not locals were very helpful and after lots of bowing we were on our way. The airport done we went for a look around the Shinjuka shopping district, this area is mind blowing with so many neon signs and the world’s supply of electronics. It was in this area we discovered Pachinko this is a peculiarly Japanese pastime and as far as I could see involves tipping ball bearings into a machine not dissimilar to a fruit machine and in return receiving more or sometimes less ball bearings out from the bottom of the machine. All this takes place in a very noisy neon lit arcade. You have to see it to believe it.

 

 

The meetings on Monday were well organised and this time there was no rolling of the eyes by our customs agent. The Tuesday saw us at Tokyo’s domestic airport for our early morning flight to Osaka and a connecting flight to Seoul. The flight was due to depart at 7 AM when the airport opened. We were aware that there were about 16 other B747’s departing almost simultaneously each having about 500 passengers on them and therefore decided that we needed to be at the airport by 5:30 AM to avoid the rush. On arriving at the airport it was a ghost town and we checked in with no issues at all. By 6AM it was getting busier but the Japanese business men are like machines and did exactly what was expected from them exactly when it was expected and as a result there were no queues anywhere. With 500 passenger booked on our flight boarding started 20 minutes before departure and was completed on time. The flight to Osaka took us past Mount Fuji and allowed some great photos to be taken. We arrived in Seoul later in the day and with meetings planned for the following morning. I have no real recollections of Korea and after our brief and unsatisfactory meetings it was off to Beijing. We flew on Air China and were the only western people on the flight; back in 2004 it was clear that Air Travel in China was still a novelty for most people and as soon as the aircraft touched down and whilst the aircraft was still on the runway the passengers all stood up and started to get their baggage out of the overhead bins.

 

 

 

Our Hotel in Beijing was a modern affair and whilst working on this project I stayed there three times in rooms with similar views and during this three month time period the pace of change in China was there to see. The view from the room on my first visit in early March was out over the city and directly in front of us was an old fashioned low level housing development, by the time of my second visit in mid May the view had gone along with the housing development and the construction of a high rise development had started. By the time of my final visit there high rise was in place and already towering over the Hotel.

Athens Olympic Torch Relay " The Survey Part 1"

During the negotiation for the station survey my colleague had cheekily inserted a clause that all flights we needed to take that were over 4 hours should be booked in business class. The event organiser offered us flights over 6 hours and we gladly accepted. In the event this was to be a godsend and I don’t think I could have achieved it if we were booked in economy class because of the sheer amount of travelling we had to do. We were also fortunate that BA decided to run a promotion that offered double points and mileage for business class travel which allowed me to build up 250,000 air miles in just three months. Our first stop was Athens on the 30^th January for a meeting with the project team to flesh out the details and put some meat on the bones. The sort of things that needed to be decided were

·         Who and what would be on each aircraft,
·         How the flame would be secured
·         The desired airport arrival and departure process.
·         The customs process for all the equipment.
·         The configuration of the aircraft.

This was a very intense project in a very compressed timescale and there was more than a few funny stories to be had as we worked our way round the world. The first of these stories was to be had on the flight back from Athens. It started out in the taxi from the Hotel to the Airport, we had a 7AM flight so had to leave the Hotel at 4AM. The taxi achieved a speed of 220KM/H (135MPH) on the motorway and used the hard shoulder to overtake when there was other traffic in the way. It became a bit scary when the driver turned around to talk to us during the overtaking manoeuvre somehow we did not die on the journey. At check in we were upgraded to Business class as I knew the Ground services manager and were allocated seats 1 A and B which were leather seats and separated by a small table which is reality was a wide arm rest. After takeoff we were offered a glass of orange juice which was placed on the table between us. We both fell asleep because with the time difference we were up at 1AM on our body clocks and had only had 2 hours sleep. Shortly after I woke up to a commotion beside me which cause me to burst out laughing. My colleague had whilst sleeping knocked the orange juice over his lap and work up suddenly sitting in a pool of orange juice, his instinctive reaction was to stand up and in doing so he smashed his head into the overhead lockers which caused him to sit down again in the pool of orange juice. The leggy blond female crew member from the galley saw what had happened and rushed over to him with a pile of tissues. At the point I woke up she was on her knees in front of him with a pile of tissues and I was left thinking “now this is business class service”

14 days after returning from Athens the station survey started in earnest and on 8^th February I was at Heathrow Airport for our flight to Cairo. It was supposed to be our first business class flight but it was sold out at the time of booking so we found ourselves in Economy class. We arrived in Cairo and were met at the top of the Jetway by our agent at Immigration my colleague I passed through without difficulty but my colleague who had not travelled much had only the one stamp in his passport which was from the US visit. The Egyptian immigration officer put the Egyptian visa stamp directly on his US stamp completely obliterating it and obviously wanting to make a point. The next morning we met with the Olympic official and customs agent who escorted us to our meeting with the General in charge of the Cairo sector. The meeting was typically Middle Eastern (I know Egypt is in Africa) and took place in a large room with all the participants sitting around the edge. The general offered us tea, my colleague refused and I kicked him, he said he did not like tea to which my response under my breath was “drink the bloody tea”. We discussed the requirements we had with him. These involved the first aircraft arriving at about 7AM with the travelling Coca Cola and Samsung team as well as the Torch security team. The Torch security team had 8 BMW motor bikes that they needed throughout the day. I said we needed to get these bikes customs cleared and our customs agent replied “that will take 5 days” I carried on. Once the bikes were cleared they needed to be driven to a local fuel station as the fuel tanks could not be more than a third full on the aircraft, then they needed to be returned to the airport for the arrival of the second aircraft. This aircraft would arrive at about 9AM with the flame on board and there would be some sort of arrival ceremony on the ramp before it departed for the day’s activities. At 18:00 the bikes would need to return to the airport and be defueled before being exported again and loaded on the aircraft. Our customs agent piped up “this will take another 5 days” I carried on. At 19:00 the flame party would arrive and need to be loaded onto the aircraft with both aircraft leaving by 20:00 local time. After this I pointed out that there would be a considerable amount of camera equipment from the travelling media team that would need to be imported and exported, our customs agents eyes rolled.

As part of the survey we wanted to see the parking locations for the aircraft and also the route the passengers and bikes would take to get out of and back into the airport. The general took us down to the ramp and waited for his driver to pick us up. When the car arrived the General ordered hi driver out and proceeded to drive us around personally, we must have been honoured guests.

After the meeting broke up our customs agent asked if we wanted to see the pyramids and our answer was obviously yes. He said get a taxi from your hotel and I will see you at the entrance at 2PM. We were quickly changed jumping into a taxi at the hotel, “how much to the pyramids we ask” and were given a figure far in excess of what the concierge had advised we should pay. After some negotiation we arrived at an acceptable fare and the journey started. “I will give you a tour” our driver says, “We don’t want a tour” we reply “we are meeting someone at the pyramids”. “A quick tour” our driver says. “We don’t want a tour” we reply “we are meeting someone at the pyramids”. This went on for a while and then the driver says “I will take you to my brother’s shop” “We don’t want to go to the shop” we reply “we are meeting someone at the pyramids”. “It is not out of the way” he says. We decline again but he is persistent. Clearly he is on some sort of commission deal with the shop so we offer to pay the driver more to take us directly to the pyramids. “I will take you to my brother’s shop” the driver replies. When we arrived at the shop they wanted to show us the entire papyrus making process but we were aware the area around the pyramids closed at 5PM and we were short of time. We quickly bought some cheap examples of the papyrus and were out of the shop in 5 minutes much to the surprise of our taxi driver. We then received a call from our customs agent asking where we were as by this time we were 30 minutes late. After a further drive we arrived one and a quarter hours late. The pyramids are magnificent but not as most people believe located in the desert they are in fact in a Cairo suburb and if your photos are taken in the opposite direction they have a backdrop of blocks of flats. The other surprise is the Sphinx which I had believed was going to be huge; it is in fact really relatively small. Unfortunately due to our detour on the way there our time is limited and we were too late to go inside them.

 

With our brief visit complete its back to the Hotel as we are at the airport early for our flight back to London. 

Athens Olympic Torch Relay "The Task"

I found myself at Gatwick on the 4^th January 2004 for my flight to Denver via Minneapolis. I was looking in the Duty Free shop to kill a bit of time and made the decision to buy a digital camera. At the time Digital Cameras were fairly new and had a low megapixel count but it was nonetheless a fantastic decision and one I will be forever be glad I made, the photo above is the first digital photo I ever took and is a view over of Nebraska on the 4th January. On arrival in Denver it was a taxi to the Hotel and a reasonable night’s sleep. The two days we were present at the “roll out meeting” for the project. Steven the CEO of mobile events company had invited all the key suppliers into the same room to explain the project and to receive the input from them about what would be required to make it work. The meeting opened with a rousing promotional video from ATHOC outlining the project and the history behind it. I have to say there was a real “WOW moment” during the video which someone has uploaded to you tube   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4uXGPgNZo4 . Then there followed a presentation of the schedule. And even though I was aware of it I had a real feeling of “what have I let myself in for” and “this is going to be the biggest thing I have ever been involved with and probably ever will be involved with” the plan was to arrive in the city on the morning run a torch relay with the flame around the city during the day and then have an end of day celebration event in the city. The next day or sometimes the same day we would depart for the next city.

The schedule for the event was

1       25 March 2004      Ancient Olympia      Greece 
2        4 June  2004      Sydney               Australia 
3        5 June  2004      Melbourne            Australia 
4        6 June  2004      Tokyo                Japan 
5        7 June  2004      Seoul                South Korea 
6        8 June  2004      Beijing              China 
7       10 June  2004      Delhi                India 
8       11 June  2004      Cairo                Egypt 
9       12 June  2004      Cape Town            South Africa
10      13 June  2004      Rio de Janeiro       Brazil 
11      15 June  2004      Mexico City          Mexico 
12      16 June  2004      Los Angeles          USA 
13      17 June  2004      St. Louis            USA 
14      18 June  2004      Atlanta              USA 
15      19 June  2004      New York             USA 
16      20 June  2004      Montreal             Canada 
17      21 June  2004      Antwerp              Belgium 
18      22 June  2004      Brussels             Belgium 
19      23 June  2004      Amsterdam            Netherlands 
20      24 June  2004      Geneva               Switzerland 
21      24 June  2004      Lausanne             Switzerland 
22      25 June  2004      Paris                France 
23      26 June  2004      London               UK 
24      27 June  2004      Barcelona            Spain 
25      28 June  2004      Rome                 Italy 
26      29 June  2004      Munich               Germany 
27      30 June  2004      Berlin               Germany 
28       1 July  2004      Stockholm            Sweden 
29       2 July  2004      Helsinki             Finland 
30       3 July  2004      Moscow               Russia 
31       5 July  2004      Kiev                 Ukraine 
32       6 July  2004      Istanbul             Turkey 
33       7 July  2004      Sofia                Bulgaria 
34       8 July  2004      Nicosia              Cyprus 
35       9 July  2004      Heraklion            Greece

There were rest days planned on 9^th June in Beijing 14^th June in Rio and 4^th July in Moscow. So in summary it was 34 Cities in 27 countries on 5 continents and all to be completed in 37 days.  

As everyone knows the same flame is used all the way from Olympia to Athens so if we could not get the flame to the next city it was agreed that the events of that day would be cancelled and we would move on the next city, so If the aircraft broke in Cairo and we were unable to get to Cape Town we would jump ahead and go directly from Cairo to Rio leaving Cape Town with no event. Given that we were supposed to be meeting Nelson Mandela in Cape Town this was not something we could contemplate. There was going to be travelling entourage of about 150-200 people with the Torch some of whom needed to be in the City before the arrival of the flame therefore we were going to need two aircraft we also had a lot of cargo including 8 motor bikes that also needed to be transported between the city’s every day and some of the distances to be covered overnight were large so the aircraft needed to be large. Taking all these facts into account it was agreed that we would use two Boeing 747-200’s. This would give us a backup aircraft as well as allowing one aircraft to leave slightly ahead of the first one with the advance party and finally having the cargo capacity and range for the distances we needed to cover. The schedule for the flights was finalised at the Denver meeting and there were some difficult decisions to be made. And example of this was that it had been arranged that the end of day celebration would be at the sound and light show at the pyramids. And the next day the flame was going to be held by Nelson Mandela on Robin Island. We could not depart Cairo until well after dark because the end of day celebration takes place after dark and they wanted us to be in Cape Town at dawn for the meeting with Mr Mandela. Given the flight time between the two cities something was going to have to give and on this occasion we had a choice between sunset in Cairo or Mr Mandela so the Robin Island Appointment was put back a few hours.  Given the scale of the event and the “risk averse” nature of event organisers it was agreed that we should visit every city in advance to make and test the arrangements in order for us to achieve this a third person was brought into out team. The three of us agreed that in order to achieve the tight time scale for the pre event visits we would divide the project up and I would be responsible for the Far East excluding Australia, India, Africa and Europe, The Americas would be someone else’s responsibility. With all this decided it was back to London to start the preparation.  

Athens Olympic Torch Relay "The Request"

My colleague had started a dialogue with the CEO of the “mobile events company” that had been tasked with taking the Athens Olympic Flame to every city that had held the Modern Olympics the candidate cities for the 2012 Olympics and a few of Athens’s Neighbours. The proposal seemed so outlandish that we had difficulty believing that it was not a scam and, if it was a real request, that it was “winnable”, Normally high profile events like this use the national carrier who offers their aircraft at a non commercial rate for the publicity. So it was decided by our CEO that we should go and see them in Athens to assess the seriousness of the request. So on the 8^th October 2003 I found myself at Heathrow Airport with my colleague for our flight to Athens. On arrival in Athens we took a taxi downtown. The journey from Athens Airport to the city allows a spectacular view of one of my favourite cities, as you come down from the mountains Athens is laid out in front of you as a huge white city. It seems that all the buildings are low rise and white. We arrived at the Hotel and set about finding a local restaurant. The one we found inspired the “Lost in Translation” feature of this blog. Amongst others it offered “chefs special sausage” as an appetiser and “grilled lamp”. “Leg of lamp” and “Lamp Chops”. The next morning we called our contact who told us he was busy in meetings and would not be able to see us at the agreed time due to meetings but had arranged for us to take a city tour with his driver until he could fit us in. This turned out to be a fantastic tour that took in the Plaka, the Acropolis and the Evzones. Then the phone call came and we were taken to the meeting in the ATHOC headquarters. It was clear from this meeting that the request was not a scam and that the national airline was not involved and in any case was not prepared to release its aircraft for the project. Having established this and following another lamp dinner we returned to London the next morning. I had no further involvement in the project whilst my colleague sourced the possible solutions for the provision of the aircraft. In late December the mobile events company confirmed we had been the successful bidder and invited us to their headquarters outside Denver Colorado early in the New Year. 

Athens 2004 Olympic Torch Relay

 

 

With all the Olympic fever about this year I thought I would do a “retrospective” on my own Olympic experience whilst I can still remember most of the details. In 2004 a colleague of mine in the aircraft brokering side of the business managed to win one of the biggest and highest profile contract ever taken on by my employer, to supply the aircraft that would take the Athens Olympic flame around the world. As the person in the business with the most experience on Aircraft operations I became a key player in the contract and accompanied the flame. My biggest regret on this contract was not keeping a journal as it was without a doubt the highlight of my working career so far. I would always advise someone in a similar position to write a journal as there were so many little things that I am sure I have forgotten. I will split the posts into manageable postings as it has taken me several months to write it and its 13,500 words long.

Munich Airport

I had occasion to pass through Munich Airport last week and had a few hours to kill. They spend a huge amount of time and money decorating the airport and it looks great, the first photo is of the cover for a escalator which has been transformed into a ski slope. the second of the Christmas Market. Munich Airport has an indoor outdoor Christmas market. It is indoors insomuch as there is an enormous covered square which I guess totals about 1000 SqM during late November and December it is transformed into a winter market with traditional shops and an ice skating rink. The shops are of a traditional log cabin construction and must have taken an age to build. All in all a very pleasant way to spend a few hours and I believe that a lot of people come out from the city to the airport just to visit the market!!

The Glamour STRESS of international business travel.

I write this posting at 10am on a Wednesday morning over the middle of the Atlantic on my 5^th flight of the week.  On Monday my work started at 6:30AM as I have clients in the Middle East and it was already 8AM on the second working day of the week for them. It was one of those unexpected busy days where the e-mail was spewing out incoming mail faster than I could deal with this. I was working at home and took the opportunity for a family lunch at the local pub. At 3:30PM my wife dropped me off at the airport and I caught a flight to Dublin arriving at 6PM. I met my client for the night (that just sounds sooooooo wrong on sooooooo many levels) at 7PM.  I was tasked to accompany a flight my company had chartered to ensure that there were no hiccups along the way. The flight departed at 1AM on Tuesday morning and I managed to sleep for most of the 4hours 40 minute duration, so far so good. Due to a minor clerical error by a subcontractor the return flight then took an hours delay in Beirut and everything started to go wrong with my week.

This meant that, as the flight time was also longer than planned, my connection for the flight back home was now 30 minutes and not the 1:45 planned. I knew I had to clear immigration, customs and security and that Ryanair are very prompt at closing the gate so I sprinted through Dublin airport and arrived at the gate 10 minutes before the departure time to find that the flight was delayed for 15 minutes. This had the knock on effect that I was 15 minutes late home and I had only allowed an hour to get to my sons school for his parents evening, the traffic was awful and we arrived 2 minutes before the start. The appointments overran by 40 minutes (being a very proud parent I can say it was because they all wanted to say nice things about him). I had to visit a supermarket on the way home to buy some porridge for a friend in Canada (which could be the subject of a posting all of its own about the weirdest thing you have carried onto an aircraft as hand baggage, although my mother would knock everyone else out of the park on that one as many years ago she had took a lawnmower into the cabin).  I arrived home at 8:10PM. Between 8 and 10PM I had to, in no particular order ….

1)      Eat
2)      Assist my son with his homework
3)      Assist my other son with formatting his work experience letters
4)      Shower
5)      Repack the bags
6)      Attend to some work e-mails and prepare for a conference call the next morning.
7)      Attend to the home e-mails
8)      Read the mail
9)      Check in for the next day’s flight
10)   Order a taxi.
11)   Spend some time with the family
12)   Sleep … bearing in mind I had not seen a bed for 38 hours at this point

At 3:45 AM I woke 15 minutes before the alarm clock was due to go off and the taxi arrived at 4:30AM my connecting bus left for the airport at 5AM and At 5:45 whilst still on the bus I started a complicated conference call with a customer, this call lasted for 45 minutes after which I passed through security and purchased my first coffee of the morning.  I am now on the way to Canada where I have two days of meetings and will leave on the overnight flight on Friday night arriving back at Heathrow at 7:30am on Saturday which means I should be home at about 9:30AM. the kids football training starts at 10AM and we have family friends for lunch the same day and dependant on how this all pans out I have to take my son to his swimming class at 5PM and I should be home about 6:30PM.

I love my job and achieving so much in a single week gives me a real buzz. I do however have to recognise the amazing job that my wife does keeping the house and family running whilst I am running abut like this.