Where’s Willie? Not on the CEO panel in LA….

Yesterday we attended the CEO panel – which is basically a talk with 3 CEO’s about business travel and obviously the current airline situation. Our very own Willie Walsh was meant to be sat with the CEO of Air Canada and Delta. But of course needed to cancel due to the Iberia and BA merger news. The excuse the MC gave? He was stuck at T5. With his bags in Milan. 2,200 people roared with laughter. The shame. The mud on our face.

The conference afterwards was brilliant though. Boeing was sponsoring and their key pitch was the real possibility that we would have bio fuels in airplanes in the next 10 years. Which is an amazing feat. Discussion later challenged this as a viable opportunity as the overall infrastructure of logistics and the cost to be able to do this will be massive challenge.

Boeing continued with the overall developments which is making aircrafts more fuel efficient overall and since developing aircrafts they have made them 70% more efficient than their first generation. The Dreamliner will be 20% more efficient on top of that. Which is quite incredible.

The highlights of the discussion overall centred around the challenges of fuel; frequent flyer programmes; baggage allowance and charging; and air traffic control issues.

One of the most striking comments was said by the CEO of Delta Air Lines Richard H. Anderson. He said that air travel was not only the only industry that has and is continuing to make huge leaps with regards to improvements in fuel efficiencies but is also pushing forward and leading the movement to find viable alternatives to fossil fuels.

After he said that, I felt a team hug coming on.

Day two of the Business travel show

We made ourselves comfortable at the British Airways stand.We got up close and personal with our competitors products...

The new business seat from Qantas due to debut on the A30 new month.

The new First class seat from JAL - rolling out across their fleet on 777's now.

when you go to the biz travel conference, you need to take a seat...

some more seats that we found

well I think that says it all.

The journey First

So we were on the plane and living the high life. A couple of glasses of Bollie before take off got us in the mood (it may have only been 10 am but the holiday starts at the airport right?) and being the responsible drinkers that we are (?) we were careful to drink lots of water – the wellbeing in the air video was not lost on us.

Later we discussed a new business brief (yes really) over dinner complete with a window view. Business is so much easier over a three-course meal when you can actually sit opposite the person you are travelling with. The full-bodied red wine and a superb dessert wine recommended by the crew were the perfect icing on the cake. If it weren’t for the guy asleep in his flat bed wearing a sleeper suit I’d have sworn we were in a top London restaurant.

A little sleep after dinner was the best I’ve ever had in the air– not hard really when you compare a fully flat six-foot bed with mattress, duvet and fluffy pillow with a seat in World traveller. Even compared with Club the duvet and extra mattres really did make all the different. After service from the crew, the bed was the next best thing about an upgrade to First.

The service provided by the crew throughout the flight was simply outstanding. No request was too big or two small. They were chatty and interested in our trip and quite surprisingly didn’t treat us any different because we were staff.

The only blip on the whole journey was the IFE system. It worked like a dream until half way through the flight when it had to be rebutted and then still didn’t work properly for some but luckily the back up system worked fine. Having a nosy at the two businessmen sitting in seats near me playing poker, it wasn't a problem for most.

The flight arrived a little early into LAX and being one of the first to leave the plane meant we were front of the queue for immigration. After a 10 hour truly blissful flight we had arrived in sunny Los Angeles ready for a weekend of fun before business as usual on Monday.

Check out our Check-in

Friday 25 July
According to the papers the day we flew to LA was expected to be the busiest day at T5 so far. We met at 8am at check in, it was busy but it was also working! Despite there being loads of people in queues for fast bag drop it still only took ten minutes to get our bags tagged.

Unfortunately the joys of staff travel meant that we couldn’t go through to the departure lounge until we were allocated seats on the plane and we didn't get these until -45 minutes. The bottom lip was out big style as this meant we didn't have time to experience the beautiful galleries lounges (and hence fill our bags with free food and grab a free Hello) or splash our cash in world duty free. The toys were just about to be thrown out of the pram when all was forgiven - we saw that our seats were in First class!

At -40 minutes to departure we sailed through fast track security and were at T5b ready to board the plane in only 10 minutes…

The night before...

There's only one more sleep until our big trip to LA and I literally cannot wait.
All the main preparation is done bar actually packing - we've check in online (Tom Stuart will be proud), hotel is booked, passes for the NBTA conference are sorted for Monday and Tuesday, plans are made to meet the US marketing team and we've even managed to blag free passes to the Airline CEO Panel that British Airways very own Willie Walsh is speaking at.

Flight departs at 10.05am tomorrow morning, which means an early start if we want to arrive in time to look around all of the lovely shops at T5 and check out the lounges. So I really had better get a wriggle on and get packing... will write soon from lala land.