convair

Swanhunter's comments on another thread on (keeping both GGL and getting AA Plat) reveals quite an astounding travel burden by some members of this forum (me included, GGL and likely heading towards 6k TP's this year). I've never seen a discussion on this forum on the lifestyle issues that arise from such a volume of travel, but they are significant.

I spend an average two days a week passing through airports, year-in year-out. I live in three countries (two continents), 2 for work, one I tentatively call home, and it is not a pretty arrangement. I reckon I spend as many days in airports as I do in any one of my three locations (I wouldn't credit them with the word "home"). Those who travel less may overlook the practical consequences - never any fresh milk or bread in the fridge when you arrive home at 11pm, need to own enormous numbers of shirts and so on to cater for laundry runs in three places, whatever book you are reading inevitably happens to be sitting in another location, mail goes unread for dangerously long periods (and in the case of my recent GGL invite, was discarded by mrs.convair as presumed junk mail!), need to purchase multiples of everything for each location, holding a four-currency stack of cash at all times and a multitude of other daily inconveniences. Not to mention zero social life - if I'm lucky to find myself in a civilised place with a non-flying evening then my choice is usually to vegetate with glass of wine and a low-brow book or movie to allow my body to recover. And I take vitamins. Why don't forum members say more about the bad external effects of our massive travel burdens? Read what we write and you'd get the impression we all love it!

convair

and just to keep the thread on-topic, what would we like BA to do that could relieve us of a little of this burden. On-board shirt-laundering? Take-home packages of fresh food? Permanent locker space at LHR? Must be some practical ideas!

Swanhunter

Interesting topic - and a very pertinent one.^ I've been doing substantial travel for the last 6 years, and it does come at a price. Mine is now all out and back to a diverse range of destinations (30+ in a year, with multiple visits to 3/4). This year looks like being the scariest yet - easily over 250K miles, a flight every 2 days and probably 20+ weeks away from home. The downsides to me:

* A decayed social life - I've lost touch with so many friends through not being around....and when I can make a party falling asleep at 10pm due to jetlag
* Weight gain through eating unhealthy airline food, too many working dinners and little opportunity to exercise.
* Travel has become more of a chore rather than event to be anticipated
* A loss of perspective on life - if it ain't 5 star/J class I'm not going, when 10 years ago I'd happily sleep on benches, stay in hostels.
* Too much work. A week in Asia means all day working at your destination and most evenings hunched over a laptop or on the phone to the UK

On a positive note, my holidays are done in significantcomfort thanks to the mounds of miles and points (though the missus gets upset if we don't go F now). And doing business across such a diverse range of destinations gives some great war stories and extra-ordinary experience.

I'm glad I have done it, but next year is time for a significant wind down. One trip every 2 months would be just perfect.

convair

Mirrors my experience - the lost of perspective is probably the worst aspect as it is the only one that will deteriorate after you stop travelling and will no longer be able to bank on all holiday travel being in F (as I've done for many years, except when I've slummed it on Concorde..).

From experience, the multiple "home" situation is very rough indeed....

BOH

My hefty travel came to an end around 1 year ago due to a change in personal circumstances. But I can concur with the experiences of Swanhunter

The biggest problem was the effect it had on my social life as I would always be so shattered after any travel to NA or Asia. Plus the weekends away would become a real chore, not only for being away from my wife and young daughter but often just boring.

At first it was a chance to see the world at someone elses expense but the novelty of that wore off about 5 years ago. Now I just have 1-2 European trips per month of about 1-2 days duration which is just fine ^

stut

Absolutely what Swanhunter said.

What I found recently, though, was the stark contrast in how different companies view this kind of travel schedule, and the huge effect that has on your life.

Company A: travel policy controlled by management who have risen through the ranks. Maximum flexibility within the boundaries of accountability required, with a number of frequent travellers deemed 'trusted individuals' who could basically book what they wanted, as long as it wasn't going to give the CFO a stroke. Travel was designed to be as non-disruptive to personal life as possible, within working hours where possible, and loyalty to airlines/hotels positively encouraged, for the extra comfort and productivity.

The company was small, travel was usually in groups, and it was like going away with your friends. You would never have to spend any continuous time away without your full approval, and travel was something asked of you, not expected of you. You could book your hotel in town, have your nights out, even book away at the beach for a few days if you fancy. As long as you do your job well.

Wonderful place to work, wonderful people to travel with.

Then I moved to Company B. Travel was seen as a source of suspicion and backhanders. If you didn't go with the (rather inconvenient and at times bloody awful) options which was greasing the palms of certain employees, you were put under immense scrutiny. Even on 100% travel (which I had not agreed to do), I had to battle weekly to get direct flights (where the alternative meant a 3am Monday start, and triple the journey time). Expenses were scrutinised by bean-counters, to the point where I was challenged about taking a train to the city, when the bus was about £1.50 cheaper. More than that, there was a strict hierarchy about travel, where you were allowed to be seen to stay (and who you were travelling with). Agreements about amount of travel were consistently ignored.

So I walked.

Sadly, it seems that the former is increasingly rare to find these days, so I just gave up on travel. I'm also the kind of person who refuses to commute by car, so I was very picky in choosing my new job. But I am based a short train/bike ride from home, have a few outings per month (also by train/bike) and couldn't be happier. This was partly motivated by quite a big change in my life (I am getting married this month), partly by travel fatigue brought on by an unreasonable company.

But it has opened my eyes to many things. Not least how wonderful travel in this, and surrounding countries can be. I'd rather get a train to Cornwall for our honeymoon than fly to some tropical island, and that's exactly what I'm doing.

Maybe I'm just getting old.

Jenbel

I've got to agree with some of this. I never reached really excessive travel levels, but I had several years of fairly continuous travel in and out of the UK and at it's worst, I did complete a 6 month period where the longest period of time I had at home was 5 days, and I was travelling most weekends to arrive at the places I needed to be to work to travel home on the following weekend (and sometimes set off again!). It was tough, and exacerbated by my colleagues who viewed it as one long jolly (it was a mix of UK and overseas, mainly long haul travel), and didn't understand why I was getting ratty at giving up yet another weekend, for what they saw as 'holiday' (= working overseas ), when I'd actually been working constantly for several months, with only the odd day snatched here and there. And of course a finance department who were convinced I was trying to do them out of money, when I was trying to ensure that I wasn't left out of pocket - 5 star hotels were frowned upon as unbeliveably luxurious - on some occasions I'd to fight hard to get 4 stars which were over budget accepted. Small childish things became endlessly amusing, like ensuring all receipts were presented in the language of the country I was working in (usually and preferably Chinese/Japanese/Korean ) since they had no hope of understanding and questioning what I was claiming

When I reduced my travel, I'd get recurrent jet-lag anyway - my body was so used to its sleep patterns getting disrupted that when I stayed on UK time for a long period, I'd get periodic insommnia anyway

As a single person, it was also a nightmare. No-one at home to keep the house ticking over (for a while, I was sharing a house and that was great, as they'd stack my mail neatly for me and make sure the bills were paid, and were happy to have the house to themselves!), but when I got my own place, I was paying everything by direct debit as I was terrified I'd miss a bill and end up being cut off by some essential service. Coming home in January to a stone cold freezing house and knowing it wouldn't be anything like warm until morning, a pile of mail to be dealt with, a case full of laundry to be turned around again as soon as possible for the next trip (my company would only let me charge hotel laundry bills if I could show either I'd been in the country for a while, or if I had consecutive trips which meant a night stop in UK only), usually on a Sunday afternoon, completely exhausted and knowing I'd to get up and go into work for the next day... it's not something I'd ever actually want to repeat.

I used to have multiple sets of toiletries, bags which kept warm weather gear, bags for cold weather gear. When travelling a lot, I'd tip the case out onto the floor, re-pack and leave again, so I wanted to find something specific, I'd need to remember what trip I last saw it on, and which pile on the floor that was

Job changes have meant it's been cut back from worldwide to UK only to very rare UK only. Status is much harder to come by, but if you aren't living at airports, it isn't such a necessity and I get to enjoy travelling again. But I have been spoilt also - hotels my family look on as great, I look on as ok... survivable etc

stut

I've found a good way round this is to avoid the chains entirely when travelling for yourself. Particularly in the UK, there's a new wave of fantastic B&Bs where the personal touch of them more than compensates for the corporate luxuries you can become so used to.

SAN_Finn

A very interesting thread. I'm in pretty much the same boat as some of you guys here. I live in 5 apartments in 4 countries across 3 continents, I call San Diego home but spent less time there this year than on an airplane seat. Flown 180000miles so far this year and the way the schedule is looking 300k by the end of the year. And it's getting worse and worse by the month.

I pretty much totally agree with swan hunters list. Loosing touch with most of my friends is the worst part for me. After that I would say just the fact that after a while it gets really lonely being that I pretty much travel always alone, meeting with different people on different places.

How long have some of you guys lived this way? I've essentially now been doing this for a couple of years on an extensive level (well if you asked me two years ago I would have said that I travel a lot being EXP but looking back that was nothing). Because I can see me doing this for a while more (it does have it perks ) but I cannot see doing it for ever. Are you guys (or girls) married or especially do you have kids? Being single makes it somewhat possible, I cannot see how I could travel this much with kids.

And having a roommate to pay bills / take care of "home" is a must also

One thing I do disagree, when ever I do get a holiday flying is by far the last thing I want to do. I give most of my miles as tickets for the family.

whmere

I can nail when it all started down more or less to the day I got back from one of my (at the time) occasional trips to the US and on my answerphone was a message saying I had to be back there the next day.

That was in 1998. I'll have 8 years continuous Gold and 2 yrs EXP this year.

I agree with everything so far - loss of the joy of travel, J or 5* or I'd rather not do it (even on my own dime), absence from home etc. What always gets me is how travel politicians are so often people that know nothing about it. True, it can be (and is) a jolly when you first start, but in time it just turns into another chore and a particularly arduous one at that. In that context I can't understand how it is productive to question an employee's decision to take a cab over a train or subway, a hotel class or a meal receipt. Surely that is what budgetary management is for. You agree a budget with someone, they keep within it and if they stay under they get a pat on the back, they go over they need to justify it. Who cares whether that employee hired a private jet or cycled? So long as its in budget. Expense report review is designed to prevent fraud/cheating, not manage budget.

convair

At it's most intensive level (4,000 upwards TPs per year) have been doing it 4 years non-stop. It's unsustainable, I do have family and it does mess things up as well as being lonely, unhealthy and so on. You know you've hit rock-bottom when hooker bars in unpleasant foreign places begin to seem like decent venues for an evening out, just for lack of any other choice than watching CNN on the hotel TV or working a few more hours.

Makes me question the whole GGL thing. Everyone on the gold guest list is living something close to an unsustainable life. Premium's (CEO's VIPS and so on) probably don't do half the level of really unpleasant travel that a GGL GCH running 5000 TP's per year from J-class - and when Premium's do travel they are probably always in F and well-cosseted. I bet no-one sustains GGL status (3,000 TPs EVERY year) for more than 6 or 7 years running. The GGL is set up as a purely travel-assist service but I wonder whether they could link us up with other concierge or home-management services for the harassed traveller (no, not talking about hooker bars again!). I was not joking in the thread's opening message when I mentioned fresh milk, clean shirts and the like.

mwalsh

Oh, boo, hooh. If you don't like your lives then change them.

I used to have a job where I was doing this two weeks out of every month and pretty much got to hate it. Biggest problem for me was dining out all the time and not being able to factor in regular excercise due to work commitments.

I moved laterally to a job with zero travel and have never looked back (with the exception of loosing my Silver card).

bernardd

That's been pretty much the story for me as well. During the mid/late-90's I was working for an English startup and travelling a lot - the company joke was "was my marriage bad because I was travelling a lot, or was I travelling a lot because the marriage was failing". Ultimately some other bugger made money from my hard work.

Eventually a combination of deliberate changes and starting a new business has got me down from the 120,000 miles a year I was doing as an AA EXP to 50,000 or so as AA PLT / BA Silver which is plenty. I'm certainly healthier and not wrecking two weeks a month with jetlag. It's interesting, as jenbel mentioned, how people equate foreign travel with holidays whereas for me it was hard work - I don't want to go back, thank you very much!

taittinger

Travelling a great deal for work is a young mans game. If you still need to travel when you get older then you need to get to a position when you get a good deal. very good hotels etc. Otherwise move back to the office.

Some poeple enjoy it, but thats there life. loosing the loyalty card is not really a big problem, as you get older you dont need to show off so much. Status does not always mean so much.

bernardd

Is it a question of history?

I wonder how many who have lived this life have long histories as a gypsy? My first memory of life at the age of not-quite-four is waiting for a plane, and the joke is I seem to have been doing it ever since! I was almost an Army brat, and wonder if we're pre-selected to do the same in later life?