The Business Travel Thread

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

Just learnt that if you have Lufthansas FTL status that beginning on the 1st of july you can use the business lounges when flying Germanwings. Sort of important because germanwings is taking over all Lufthansa flights not connecting to/ from Frankfurt or Munich.

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

Update:A report from my first germanwings flight in a few years:

It is one of the planes that's had the fresh makeover and its now got better leg space than anything I have flown in a few years. Apparently the first 10 rows have the most space in Europe(longhaul excluded). Food was better too. If this is the new cheap Lufthansa that's offering more I'm all for it. I currently see no disadvantages to LH.

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

Availability of reward flights with different airline bonus programs.

 

German focus is obviously on Topbonus (Air Berlin) and M&M from the Lufthansa group. M&M in the past few years has been putting a lot of effort into make the program less attractive :-(

 

Platzierung Verfügbarkeit der angefrageten Prämienflüge in % Airline Vielfliegerprogramm Veränderung von 2012 bis 2013

1 100,0% airberlin topbonus keine Veränderung

1 100,0% GOL SMILES + 2,9 Punkte

1 100,0% Southwest Rapid Rewards keine Veränderung

2 98,6% Virgin Australia Velocity Rewards + 8,6 Punkte

3 95,0% AirTran Airways A+ Rewards + 7,9 Punkte

4 90,0% Air Asia BIG zum ersten Mal in der Studie

5 88,6% JetBlue TrueBlue + 2,2 Punkte

5 88,6% Singapore Airlines KrisFlyer - 2,1 Punkte

6 86,4% Qantas Group Frequent Flyer + 7,8 Punkte

7 82,1% Lufthansa/Swiss/Austrian Miles & More - 10 Punkte

8 80,0% United Airlines MileagePlus - 7,1 Punkte

9 79,3% Air China PhoenixMiles zum ersten Mal in der Studie

10 77,9% Air France/KLM Flying Blue + 22 Punkte

11 66,4% Air Canada Aeroplan - 12,2 Punkte

12 65,7% British Airways Executive Club - 13,6 Punkte

13 56,4% Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan - 2,9 Punkte

13 56,4% Cathay Pacific Asia Miles - 14,3 Punkte

14 55,0% LAN LANPASS - 23,6 Punkte

15 54,3% AviancaTaca LifeMiles zum ersten Mal in der Studie

16 51,4% SAS Scandinavian EuroBonus - 6,5 Punkte

17 48,6% American Airlines AAdvantage + 2,9 Punkte

18 45,0% Emirates Skywards + 12,1 Punkte

19 40,0% Turkish Airlines Miles&Smiles + 1,4 Punkte

20 36,4% Delta Air Lines SkyMiles + 9,3 Punkte

20 36,4% US Airways Dividend Miles + 2,8 Punkte

 

Study

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

Looks like Alitalia is just short of going broke (again). I don't get why Air France/KLM actually invested in them.

 

ARD.de

[LukeSkywalker 5,812]

Before KLM hooked up with Air France, they looked at Alitalia twice, but the negotiations didn't succeed. Dutch and Italians don't co-operate very well like in Anglo-Dutch companies (Unilever, Shell, Reed Elsevier and many others). They invested in Alitalia because of the network and in order to reduce costs by creating synergy effects. Don't ask me which effects exactly, because that's the whole issue .

[Hutcho 2,226]

Because they don't want them to be completely worthless when they come in and buy them up for a bargain price.

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

 

 

Munichs PR video. I like the part about all the drinking.

 

The beginning gives me the shivers because its very German meeting talk.

[Johnny English 3,066]

They have a bit with a kid on a skateboard in the terminal...I think reality would see him being scolded or arrested.

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

 

Not really seeing the point of this small flight going out of duesseldorf :-/

 

To the Channel Islands maybe?

[Pas 8,131]

Australian Channel Islands?

[dj_jay_smith 3,435]

It's actually Sun air flight to Billund. But they operate a franchise in BA colours.

http://www.uk.sun-air.dk/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun_Air_of_Scandinavia

 

And the plane is a British Aerospace Jetstream 31

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_Jetstream

[Mapleleafdude 4,290]

No mechanic to fix your Airplane at the Airport? DIY man can help!

 

The luck is mit die stupid.

 

P.S.:Article is in German, to lazy to look for an English version.

[LukeSkywalker 5,812]

On 23.10.2012, 17:38:28, LukeSkywalker said:

 

I use that to keep track of my flights. Who can top this ? Among other flights I have been 45 times to Africa alone.

I didn't fly so much anymore the last 8 years, also because of more projects in Germany and more remote work, so these are my current stats. I can find my way to any gate in Munich blindfolded :).

 

 

 

[slammer 550]

On 28.8.2020, 17:06:51, LukeSkywalker said:

I didn't fly so much anymore the last 8 years, also because of more projects in Germany and more remote work, so these are my current stats. I can find my way to any gate in Munich blindfolded :).

 

 

 

In what period, but yeah! I can probably top that.. Miles and more platinum card strike fear into your heart? And that was only with Star alliance… 

One good flight was from Lystrup to Copenhagen to Paris to Chicago to Miami to Panama to Bogota to Buenos Aires to Santiago de Chile only to arrive at a customer to LITERALLY plug the machine to the mains.

Flew back almost the same way only to be diverted to Mexico City from Chicago one hour after landing from Miami.

[LukeSkywalker 5,812]

Personally, I wouldn't accept your itenary to Chile, but you get the miles :). I was Senator with Lufthansa and Gold with Emirates. Senator means that you can always check in first class which is quite nice, almost private security check and 10 meter distance from the Senator Lounge in Munich with Weißwurst and Leberkäse. No French haute cuisine like with Air France. The hell with that :).

[slammer 550]

1 hour ago, LukeSkywalker said:

Personally, I wouldn't accept your itenary to Chile, but you get the miles :). I was Senator with Lufthansa and Gold with Emirates. Senator means that you can always check in first class which is quite nice, almost private security check and 10 meter distance from the Senator Lounge in Munich with Weißwurst and Leberkäse. No French haute cuisine like with Air France. The hell with that :).

Well it was an emergency where the customer´s lawyers were talking to our lawyers. Actually what it was was that the indio cleaning woman had been told to plug her vaccum cleaner into the wall socket and when the installed the machine where did they plug it?
One of the best flights was on a A300, something or other with only 40 luxurious seats on the whole thing, I was hand carrying a 70.000 USD laser unit and got arrested on arrival as the laser was classed as a weapon.
Spent the night in a south east asian... Slammer...

 

Or on a flight to Tehran...
The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Tehran was uneventful; I had been given a rare seat in the business class and I was well on my way to being stewed on the booze served by an exceptionally pretty stewardess. About an hour before landing, the captain had just announced our ETA; some of the woman passengers went to the loo to emerge clad in the traditional black Tschador, a plane full of little Darth Vader’s.The stewardess came around for a last time with the drinks trolley and handed everyone a souvenir, a delightful little blue Delft porcelain house in the manner of the Patrizier houses you see on the Grachten and Waatervronten in Amsterdam, a little gift normally filled with Bols schnapps.

These little houses however were marked with the words:

 

“Empty due to customs regulations on this route”"

 

Going to have to finish writing them memories someday, it was a fun time, like going to Buenos Aires and ending up in the South American version of Playboy, but that´s another story.

 

[LukeSkywalker 5,812]

On 8/30/2020, 11:35:12, slammer said:

Going to have to finish writing them memories someday, it was a fun time, like going to Buenos Aires and ending up in the South American version of Playboy, but that´s another story.

OK, you're male, but otherwise I would have written "Pictures please" 😁.

[john g. 31,927]

On 8/31/2020, 12:35:12, slammer said:

Well it was an emergency where the customer´s lawyers were talking to our lawyers. Actually what it was was that the indio cleaning woman had been told to plug her vaccum cleaner into the wall socket and when the installed the machine where did they plug it?
One of the best flights was on a A300, something or other with only 40 luxurious seats on the whole thing, I was hand carrying a 70.000 USD laser unit and got arrested on arrival as the laser was classed as a weapon.
Spent the night in a south east asian... Slammer...

 

Or on a flight to Tehran...
The KLM flight from Amsterdam to Tehran was uneventful; I had been given a rare seat in the business class and I was well on my way to being stewed on the booze served by an exceptionally pretty stewardess. About an hour before landing, the captain had just announced our ETA; some of the woman passengers went to the loo to emerge clad in the traditional black Tschador, a plane full of little Darth Vader’s.The stewardess came around for a last time with the drinks trolley and handed everyone a souvenir, a delightful little blue Delft porcelain house in the manner of the Patrizier houses you see on the Grachten and Waatervronten in Amsterdam, a little gift normally filled with Bols schnapps.

These little houses however were marked with the words:

 

 

“Empty due to customs regulations on this route”"

 

Going to have to finish writing them memories someday, it was a fun time, like going to Buenos Aires and ending up in the South American version of Playboy, but that´s another story.

 

 

Loving your stories💋💋🙏🏻

[slammer 550]

4 hours ago, john g. said:

Loving your stories💋💋🙏🏻

4 hours ago, john g. said:

Loving your stories💋💋🙏🏻

Quote

 

Dance the Tango

We must start with a trip to Argentina and Buenos Aires.
I had decided against flying from `Monte to BA (listen to me talk the talk) instead I booked a boat trip across the Rio Plate.

In an earlier less hectic era, there had been a flying boat service across the river. The remains of the service between Europe, the Azores, San Salvador, and Brazil ending in Argentina. The terminal still exists in Montevideo and I had explored it the other day.

 Inside the building are still the wooden counters of the ticket desks, flight plans and calendars hang from the wall the newest calendar years out of date.

Outside the ramps and chains used to pull the planes out of the water lie grassed in, unseen and almost forgotten. The wooden passenger bridge where Big Short Sunderland’s and Boeing clippers docked had long collapsed and all that remained were blackened stumps sticking out of the oily water.

Plans are set-up to turn the whole area into a container yard and I am glad that I was able to see the remains and imagine how it must have been in its heyday.

By the way the River Plate is the widest river estuary in the world and the waters are a muddy yellow-brown colour, "too thick to drink and too thin to plow" as the locals say.

The trip across to BA was just over three hours by Sea cat

In direct contrast to the frozen in time twenties Art Deco charm of Montevideo, Buenos Aires is by far the more dynamic City (I tend to look at Buenos Aires and Montevideo as two sides of the same coin almost twin Cities, you can’t visit one without seeing the other)

Argentina had recently devaluated the Peso and now the course was three Pesos to one Euro, however the shop prices had not been re-evaluated and it was as if my money had trebled.

I checked in to the hotel amazed at the security and the hectic going on. The Bloke behind the counter told me that a Playboy photo shoot was on and the guards were there to keep the hot bloodied Latinos in line.

Hmmmmmm!

I saw, that the girls were segregated from us mortals by giants in suits and dark glasses, the kind of person that may have trouble with the correct sequence of the letters in the alphabet.

 But boy! What knuckle draggers, evolution in motion, these guys where not to far removed from our tree-loving cousins.

Hmm! Banana Goood!

I reckoned however that if I wanted a chance to see the girls then I should go to the gym for a workout. The playboy chicks after having had lunch and upchucking the food again might be working out too.

 Hey! It’s part of their job after all.

They will see that I have a body merged out of a god and a filmstar  (Buddha and Shrek in my case) and maybe one will gasp and swoon at my manlyness and go to bed with me.

So far my thinking.

One hour later having pumped a ton and a bit of iron, I had had enough and went into the sauna.

Relax, Ahhhhh!

Not being a regular sauna person I soon started to run hot and made to leave after only a quarter hour.

 Only to have the door flung open and in came some of the most glorious creatures on god’s earth...

...In the raw!

Yes!

YES! So far my grand plan was working

They had started a `shoot here in the gym. There were girls on the pulley’s, girls on the jogging machine, girls with weights, girls sweating under the hot photographic lights.

They had however overlooked to check the sauna and I was now in the middle of six smiling naked chicks.

In came the photographer! Bzzzeeet, Bzzzeeet, went his camera.

He saw me sitting on the bench making a tent with my towel, one hand on his hip the other over his mouth.

He minced over to me and put his hand on my upper arm. “Hmmmm! You are soooo very strong”

He said in a feminine voice, stroking my arm and chest. “And you are soooo fucking dead if you go lower” was the first thought that went through my mind.

“Do you think that you could carry one of the girls on your strong arm?”

“Oh! I’ll give it a try!”

“Cheyenne,” he called “Cheyenne, Honey come here and meet Mr. Ahhh! What’s your name,” he asked giving my chest another grope.

“Slammer”

“Cheyenne, this is Slammer”

“Slammer, sweetheart, this is Cheyenne”

“MrfgHodapheww”

What a smasher! I was able to lift her without feeling any weight at all, what DO these chicks eat?

She sat on my outstretched arm draping herself round my neck.

Bzzeeet, Bzzeeet, Bzzzeet! Went the camera again.

A few frames later:

He was standing there again with one hand on his hip and the other in front of his mouth and I had sweaty Cheyenne sill perched on my arm.

“Ray honey! I think we must tie a towel around you, I can’t sell photos with that big ugly thing sticking out like that.”

 Said he and tied a towel round my waist.

 And that´s the story of how Ray got into playboy.

 Later I found out that only two photos from the gym had been used, and I wasn’t on them.

So much for my career as a photo model.