Originally Posted by
El_Duderito
I love the ATH/IST/CAI region ConciergeMike suggested! Instead of going to mainstream places everybody would go let us take advantage of the charter aspect. All we need is a long runway and we can probably get places most of us would love to go but simply cannot due to costs or lack of flights.
How about
:
- Abu Simbel (or Aswan/Luxor): Could probably be done as a daytrip from anywhere in the region
- Gibraltar (GIB): Ever had a street closed for a plane full of Flyertalkers landing?
- Marrakech (RAK): just because it is close to GIB.
- Azores: too far away I suppose
- Cape Verde
There are many interesting non-aviation related places on
http://wikitravel.org/en/Unesco that could use some additional business/tourism.
Do you have statistics on the nationalities? If we opt for destinations too exotic some visa restrictions or higher costs might be involved.
The question would be how to incorporate this into the StarAlliance theme ;-)
As Tommy has noted in his very cogent initial assessment, we are not visiting cities so what's the point of wasting time at airports/airlines with little to offer? These are all minor newbies to STAR and we have much better prospects to work with among the majors. I thought the whole point of a MegaDo was to provide a unique "backstage" tour of airline ops. If you really want to see Istanbul and Cairo, book a STAR award ticket and go see these cities. (At some point I would like to visit both cities, but on this event we would be visiting CAI and IST, not Cairo and Istanbul!) My preference is to see more behind the scenes of major STAR carriers and meet the men and women who design the product that makes each carrier unique. And since we've done Europe and some of us the US, I'd say Asia is the region we should be directing our attentions to next.