A trip down memory lane for some ?

[RogerS]

Any of you frequent flyers of BA? In the Executive Club ?

While waiting interminably onhold on the BA website, I was idly browsing through the various buttons on my Exec club (Blue basic!) account and stumbled across 'My Flightpath'. Clicking on it revealed all my business and personal BA flights, dates and destinations since 1992 ! Browsing through that brought back a load of memories - some good, some bad (like the time an Arab was driving me out to a disco deep into the desert in Dubai when he reached across to offer me a swig from a hip flask and I only then realised he was several sheets to the wind. )

Interesting trying to figure out which company I was working for at the time of each trip and what the trip was all about.

 

[Blackswanwood]

Yes - I flick through it occasionally on the app. I think it’s a clever bit of marketing as I never remember just what a grind business travel is (and it is) and start thinking about holidays.

 

[RogerS]

Yes - I flick through it occasionally on the app. I think it’s a clever bit of marketing as I never remember just what a grind business travel is (and it is) and start thinking about holidays.

Depends if you go comfy class or even extra comfy class. I did some consultancy work for a pharma and even their external consultants they sent Virgin Upper Class!

 

[Blackswanwood]

I got offered an upgrade coming back from Hong Kong last year ... my wife was with me on a separate booking and there was only one seat so I declined. Apparently it was the wrong answer and I should have insisted they gave it to her ...

 

[Roland]

I’ve travelled all my working life, and thought that in retirement we’d travel together. Instead I’m enjoying waking up in our own bed every morning, and not living out of a suitcase.

 

[novocaine]

I dislike BA. Instead i tens to fly KLM SAS or airfrance. Both of which schemes i was platinum with until last year when I reduced my travel to european work by preference and swung to more renewables over o&g work.
Im happy to be gold or silver with either but fully expect to be blue and ivory by the end of this year. Ho hum, ive seen the world on someone else's account, i shall not complain.

 

[Steve Maskery]

I once flew Maharja Class to Delhi. I could stretch out my legs without touching the seat in front and there was a coffee-table sized space between me and my nearest fellow traveller. Dusky maidens saw to my every whim.
It was with Air India which had 4 planes, one was flying Rajiv Ghandi to Canada, another was grounded at Nairobi for drug charges. So they were down to two planes. The return trip. The return trip was subcontracted to Middle East Airlines. Knees under my chin and dry
S

 

[Phil Pascoe]

I was amused some years ago to be served a meal on Air NZ on leaving Auckland to be given Rodda's clotted cream. This is made two miles from where I live, and NZ is a dairy producing Country.

 

[RogerS]

I worked or an American company where one of their sales guys was permanently flying across the breadth of the States. One time he was so exhausted he totally lost track of time and the airport and missed the calls for boarding. Suddenly realised what had happened, he legged it to the gate to find it empty but the plane still there and the jetway connected. He charged down it as fast as he could go and there, at the bottom was the Captain at the door, arms crossed, drumming his fingers who then said "Mr Schwarz...if you weren't a MillionMile customer we'd have left without you'.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

My mother and I flew out of Faro just after 25/4/74. The airport staff were full of their own importance and some a little trigger happy. The customs men pointed a gun at us, tipped our luggage on the floor and picked through it with bayonets. They then marched us across the runway with bayonets in our backs to board the plane. A banging hangover, and every time I nearly dropped off to sleep the garlic on my breath woke me up again.

 

[doctor Bob]

Just to put the sh!tters up you 1992 ....... flying .......... I was air traffic back then

 

[Trevanion]

My mother and I flew out of Faro just after 25/4/74.

I’ve got a photo somewhere of my father standing in the terminal of Vienna International Airport on 27/12/85 with a clock in the background showing 30 minutes or before the terrorist attack but by that point he was already in the air and the news of the attack got home before he did and my grandparents didn’t have a clue whether he was killed/injured or not until he came through the door.

Also got some photos somewhere of some private planes he worked on for some Saudi Prince or something like that with the company he was working for and the whole interior was gold plated, marble veneers and even chandeliers, I kid you not. Apparently they were extraordinarily strict about photos and such and the plane was guarded by armed guards but he still nabbed some photographs.

 

[doctor Bob]

Also got some photos somewhere of some private planes he worked on for some Saudi Prince or something like that with the company he was working for and the whole interior was gold plated, marble veneers and even chandeliers, I kid you not.

That's nothing, my plane is wall papered with Rhino ball bags.............

 

[Richard_C]

Without and extant BA club membership, I still occasionally trip down memory lane because I use boarding cards (when you get them) as bookmarks. They fade and/or get lost, but I sometimes open a rarely used reference book or re-read something and think "ah - Denver Chicago 1989...." or whatever.

Now retired, most of my work travel was short haul European taking whatever airline went where you wanted when you wanted. BA was a bit of favourite. Now they are bottom of the pile for me, cheapened beyond belief. Were it not for their Heathrow slots and therefore routes I can't see why I would choose them.

A general observation, life for passengers in the front of the aeroplane has improved, life in economy has got a whole load worse with tighter seat dimensions put in at every opportunity and the refreshments removed. We flew to NZ 2 years ago, treating ourselves to business class Cathay Pacific in an A350 as it was close to 12+12 hours both ways and very much a one-off trip. Fully flat beds, excellent service and food, better multimedia than I have at home. Business class a few years back had excellent food and service and big seats but nowhere near the modern 'your own bed in a cinema' experience. But get on economy now in any 737/320 variant in Europe and the experience seems worse than the time before. Price drives the market so the flag carriers are no different from anyone else. They get you there for not too much money but don't expect to enjoy it.

Sad to see the BA 747s withdrawn though, admittedly their time had come and the last one I flew on back in 2015 was downright scruffy inside. But, that shape ......

 

[RogerS]

....
Sad to see the BA 747s withdrawn though, admittedly their time had come and the last one I flew on back in 2015 was downright scruffy inside. But, that shape ......

Totally agree. Seats 5A or 5C were the bee's knees on VirginAtlanic. No-one in front of you...just the bulkhead about 5ft away. Plenty of legroom ! And the only other seat in the row was way over the other side. Like flying across in your own living room.

 

[Richard_C]

And Boeing announced today end of 747 production in 2022. Mr President might get the very last one.

(I suspect most new ones are cargo or mixed load these days)

 

[MikeG.]

My air miles were done at a very different level to some of you, clearly. I flew on an Egyptian airline sometime in the 80s which had vinyl bench seats and that chromed hand-hold on the outside corner where bus passengers could cling on whilst standing. I kid you not. It also had netting for overhead shelving, like in old BR trains.

 

[RogerS]

My air miles were done at a very different level to some of you, clearly. I flew on an Egyptian airline sometime in the 80s which had vinyl bench seats and that chromed hand-hold on the outside corner where bus passengers could cling on whilst standing. I kid you not. It also had netting for overhead shelving, like in old BR trains.

You had a seat ? :shock: :lol:

 

[Eric The Viking]

I flew a fair bit in the 1990s, mostly to the USA though. Friends were keen on BA, but United had the better air miles scheme and better connections in North America (we were allowed to choose but my company had a 'cashback' scheme with United so it was preferred).

We used to love the United 747s, as they configured them so that the entire upper deck space was business class. My company wouldn't pay, but I'd get sufficient air miles on one west coast trip to upgrade for a transatlantic leg, usually on the way home. Bloomin excellent. Quite disappointed when they started to switch over to 777s.

The other thing that was nice was tiny: United used to have a buttonhole sewn into one corner of their napkins. Not seen this anywhere else, but then I don't get around much these days.