I recently made two business trips to PMI. Most people go there for fun, especially this time of year. But I had to work. The Copa Del Rey (The Kings Cup sailing race) is going on now and my company was providing some technical resources. Since the King was there and all the media, I went along to make sure things were OK.

The first trip was MAD-PMI on JK in biz which was very nice. Great service on a short flight. PMI has to have the largest collection of model commercial airplanes anywhere! They had a huge plastic case of them, some about 10 feet long (esp. an Air France A340 with cutouts). This was a last minute trip and I had no hotel reservation. Before leaving I checked on the web and nothing was available. This is the high season. But I know there are always last minute cancellations. So I did something I've never done before. After leaving the baggage area I went to one of those hotel reservation desks. There was a nice girl who helped me out. I said I was looking for a 4-star hotel, but she must have thought she was doing good to save me money and she found a 2-star called the Horizonte. It was €45 with Breakfast for a single which I guess is good at this time in Palma. It was walking distance to the fast-food area and since I got in late I grabbed some pizza and went to bed.

The next day after working at the race, I flew JK to BCN, then transferred to AF's Brit Air (CRJ) to LYS. I fly Brit Air a lot these days and they are really quite competent. You get 1000 AF miles for every flight! I've done enough of these to make AF Bleu on segments so far. The transfer was quite easy going that direction at BCN. But the opposite is not as I learned a few days later. I returned LYS to BCN on Brit Air, then wandered looking for a transit desk or some sign of my IB flight to PMI. Nothing. AF at LYS were not able to print out a boarding pass for me so I needed to check in somewhere. A guard told me to exit and go up the stairs. But up the stairs was security and they wanted to see my boarding pass. So I went back down and my flight was not on the TV. I went to the information desk and they told me I had to go to terminal B. I went out and walked to the next terminal and checked in at the IB counter. The boarding pass said gate M3 which I found is a huge area with lots of gates. Still my flight wasn't on the board. Then I found a transit desk for IB (which was not easy to find) and they told me the flight was 2 hours delayed. I looked on the board and found another IB flight to PMI boarding in 10 minutes. I raced over and was told that the flight was full. I turned on the charm and said I would wait to see if someone didn't show up. I ended up with the last seat and got to PMI just before midnight. I worked for a couple of hours and then went to a pre-arranged hotel called The Saratoga. It was 4 star and pretty nice. It had free wifi and a huge breakfast spread for €90. Since it was too late for any food, I hit the mini bar for a nice meal of Champagne and potato chips. Luxury holiday in Palma! Hah!

Leaving today to LHR I had booked BD over the web. The BD web site said the flight was sold out, but I poked around and got it to sell me a business flexible fare for €240. I got to PMI about 40 minutes before the flight as they were just about to close check-in. But they told me that even though I had an e-ticket, I needed to visit the ticket office to get one printed out. The same thing happened to me in VCE a few days ago. Even though Europe is finally getting E-tickets, they still don't quite have it down yet. The lady at the BD ticket counter had my ticket ready and she said "your the last one". I wanted to say "why couldn't you just bring it to the check-in desk". Oh well. I didn't even show her any ID. I walked a country mile to the non-shengen departure area and found my flight delayed 20 minutes. No lounge anywhere in this area. In fact there is only one lounge at PMI and it's all the way at one end in the domestic/shengen area. It could be over a km from your gate.

BD biz is fine, but the lunch was greek salad or tuna salad. Yuck! I just had a cup of tea and read my book. Approaching LHR, the captain said there was a huge storm over the airport and we were to circle for 30 minutes. Upon landing I went to the Avis bus and it was pouring heavily. We must have flown in during the eye of the storm. Time for dinner. Ciao!