I retired from personal blogging in July 2008.
But you can find me over at http://blog.xero.com.
I went east towards the UK this trip and had to stop in the cell in LA. Flights through Hong Kong were too solid to go the preferred, but longer, left route.
One of my skills is being able to be first to leave the plane regardless of what seat I’m in. Those skills are important in LA as you may end up queuing for an hour to stand in the Transit box for 30 minutes.
This time the transit immigration people didn’t turn up so that meant going through normal immigration.
Being so close to a shower I went outside. Big mistake as the queue back in through security was a 40 minute exercise. Made it with 10 minutes to spare so got a quick shower.
Love that the Koru Club wifi key (through unnecessarily complex) is the same all over the world.
Air New Zealand now allow movies from when you arrive at your seat to wheels on the tarmac at the other end. Fantastic.
The key to overseas trips is to start 4-6 weeks earlier on your appointments. Nothing worse than being on the otherside of the world with downtime. In London you can do 4-5 meets a day. Breakfasts and dinners are meeting time. I’ve got 20+ scheduled meetings this week, with a free afternoon for follow ups and lucky meets. You just have to use the time.
Looking forward to meeting up with people at the KEA event tomorrow night. Looks like its a full house so that will be a good event.
It’s great to tap into local connections and resources. Deloittes have a fantastic facility we have access to which is great for meetings and workshops.
Doing business in the UK is fun and exciting. As you fly in over the city you can just see the size of the huge market. The people are friendly and smart. Things are definitely up a few notches up here.
It’s great having a full time team in country. With other businesses we’ve flown through with a once over lightly. We can have our local people manage the local relationships which makes a big difference.
8:00 start tomorrow and an hour of humid and sticky travel to get there. Time for sleep.
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In general it sucks, badly - really there’s a lot of luck to do with other flights and whether you all hit immigration together - on average though I doubt it’s any worse time-wise than Auckland’s silly setup where the domestic terminal is so far away.
SFO seems to be a bit easier to get through
Of course nothing on the West Coast seems to be as bad as the hell that JFK can sometimes be
Showers in AKL on the way home are a definite plus
The travel experience is so variable. I just repeated the exact same itinerary, and it was absolutely flawless. Transit in LA was quite pleasant; I had to queue for maybe 15 minutes, and free Wifi made the time fly by (Skype worked great).
I chose LAX because of the baggage allowance: 20kg total through Asia vs 2 x 23kg through North America — a huge difference at $35 per kg of excess baggage. My bags weighed 40kg total, so I would’ve been hit with $700 excess baggage charges (potentially).
Air New Zealand is by an order of magnitude the best airline I’ve ever travelled on. They are just fantastic. The entertainment system being available from the very beginning is such a huge improvement, it takes care of that limbo period before you take off where you’re still wound up from the security checks, but still haven’t relaxed completely even though you successfully made it onto the plane.
Hmmmm
Try Heathrow guys….
I fly home to NZ three or four times every year.
The worst experience of many ?
You will think I am making this up, but I DEFY any of you to beat this :
You queue for THREE AND A HALF hours to check in
You go up to security
You queue for another TWO AND A HALF hours there
Your blood pressure is through the roof.
You have a wife and a baby who are both - well, enough said.
You have lost the will to live.
You make it to the departure gate about 10 minutes before boarding.
You learn that the flight itself has been delayed by A MINIMUM OF THREE HOURS, because the CREW ARE HELD UP AT SECURITY AND THERE AREN’T ENOUGH SECURITY STAFF ON. The crew ! This despite the fact that they insist that you turn up a minimum of four hours before boarding….
You can’t leave the departure lounge - and there are no toilets, cafes or shops or anything else to do.
You finally board the plane.
Captain comes on the intercom and offers no apology, at all, for the massive delay.
You miss your connection in Singapore, because the crew can’t get to security on time at Heathrow despite the fact that they insist you get there a minimum of four hours before your flight. There are no further connecting flights to Auckland that day.
No apologies are made, nothing is done to reconnect you, you are not offered any hotel or anything else. You have to to the desk and queue with many other tired and angry Kiwis to try and get yourself onto the next flight in the morning.
You make your own arrangements and drag said baby and mother to a hotel for the night. You have to pay for this yourself, mother is very out of sorts and so you make it a really nice hotel.
You get up extremely early and travel to the airport at Changi to catch your early morning flight. The cab you ordered just simply does not show up.
You finally get to the airport.
You suffer several hours delay at checkin, and security - not as bad as Heathrow, but not too far behind it.
You then discover that your Auckland flight has been delayed BY 6 HOURS and no reason is given.
You finally make Auckland…..more than 24 hours after you were supposed to.
AND THE AIRLINE HAVE LOST ALL OF YOUR BAGS - AND YOUR PRAM
Just reliving this has made my blood pressure go again - off for a beer now
Gee John, who are you flying with - Air Zimbabwe?
Arrived Heathrow last Monday afternoon. From touch down of wheels to hotel in Maida Vale (by pickup taxi) 1 hour 40 minutes. Included picking up 3 hold bags. On the same flight was Stephen Jones, Eddie Butler and all the UK hacks back from the rugby disaster trip. None looked very happy.
Maybe you need to buy a private jet between you all! Air xero!
I love the UK and the opportunities its opened my eyes to (Thank you Rod), its definitely a country where business is always happening and its very social. One day I may come back to my home country but I cant see that happening for a long time.
Where else in the world can you fly an hour in any direction and be in a completely different country with completely different culture and traditions.
Living in the Uk taught me how to ‘really’ be social, to really extend myself and talk to people just for the sake of it and the business opportunities are excellent too :-)
Heathrow is a world class airport and probably one of the best considering its the busiest in the world, to be delayed for 3 hours is an exceptional circumstance. I fly in and out of Heathrow once a month from different terminals and its excellent.