dunk

The Annual BA FT Trip Report of the Year Competition 2013

Ladies and Gentlemen,

With apologies for the (traditional) slightly late start, it's time to kick-off this year's annual trip report competition.

You were a busy lot during 2013 and we almost reached 200 BA-related TRs. The year was characterised by some new themes that emerged:

• TP runs
• live trip reports
• and of course, BA's new A380s and 787 Dreamliners

as well as the usual fine crop of narrative and photographic stories from both established and new authors.

For this year we will keep the same three voting categories:

• Best overall report
• Best newcomer
• Best video report

But there will be a change to the nomination and voting process this year to make things a lot more transparent.

In summary, everyone gets to nominate as many as they like. The mods and ambassadors will do the totting up and whittle this down to a short-list of 10 or so for the main category, and we'll then use the forum poll facility to make the voting process open and simpler.

There are fewer first-timers and video TRs so we probably won't need to reduce those lists.

As you may know, I've been maintaining a directory of BA TRs and the final list can be found here: http://app1-baft.rhcloud.com/ft%20tr%20list.html. New members are marked with a *so you can easily identify them. Video TRs should be self-evident.

And so to the rules:

• All trip reports must have been posted between 1 January 2013 and 31 December 2013 inclusive, per my list.
• All nominations must be made by a poster other than the author.
• The nomination must be made in this thread; please explain why you think the chosen report should win - a few sentences will do the job. (Please add a link to the report in the nomination to avoid confusion.)
• Authors may make a subtle plug for their own work (by way of introduction or reminder) but another member must make the official nomination.
• A large portion of the content should relate to BA, but other airlines and/or ground travel that relates to the trip are acceptable.
• Reports that do not include any BA travel are not eligible for nomination.
• There's no need to pile in with lots of support for any particular TR. One nomination is fine, thank you.

The time-scale this year will be:

• Nominations close at 23:59 GMT on 31st January 2014.
• The mods and ambassadors will create the short-lists during the following week.
• Polling will take place during the week commencing 8th February 2014 with the winners being announced on the 16th.

And prizes you ask ? I'm sure we'll come up with something

For reference, last year's competition thread is here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...on-2012-a.html, my TR directory thread is here: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...directory.html, and of course the TR forum sticky: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...ip-report.html.

Finally, thank you to all the authors for your efforts over this year. Every TR is a valuable contribution to the community, and people will no doubt find it useful, inspiring and interesting, even if you didn't intend to enter the competition.

Happy reading and in with your nominations !

Best wishes from the
BAEC FT Moderators and Ambassadors.

Prospero

Thanks dunk. ^

With so many BA trip reports posted on FT during 2013, judging this year's competition will be tougher than ever before. Just in case anyone skipped dunk’s note on this year’s judging process - this year the winners will be selected by public vote. Yes! that’s right. All members will be invited to cast their vote on the reports they think deserve to win. The report with the greatest number of votes will be declared the winner.

Due to limitations of FT’s poll function - which limits polls to ten categories, a closed jury will still be needed. This jury, made up of the BA forum Ambassador and Mod teams, will create a shortlist for you to vote on in each category.

Let’s have your nominations please

stu1985

PETER01 gets my vote.

He has done a good few TR's this year and, in my opinion, his standard has got higher and higher. There's a good mix of writing and photos (which again, have got much better as last year progressed).

It's difficult to pick out one of his as my favourite but I think it has to be the Marina del Rey one - I really enjoyed it. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...a-del-rey.html

DWFI

My thanks to every single person who has taken the time to write a trip report. Hundreds or thousands of people read the reports - they really are appreciated.

Send your nominations! ^

HIDDY

I'd like to nominate this cheeky faced chap for his excellent report Singapore | BA first class flights, ten days at the Mandarin Oriental, out & about

^

dunk

I calculate around 1.2 million views and 5,000 comments. That's a lot of wasted time ...

That said, a disproportionately large number of them are for SFO777's unapologetic view of the BA world

crazy8534

I have really enjoyed reading a few of the TRs over the past year. I would like to nominate:

badoc for http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...l#post21638556 Lovely photos of the new A380 interior and menus.

BahrainLad for video TR http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yRuVY...ature=youtu.be A nice honest video TR with a good sense of the environment of F.

Manx Flyer for ? newcomer (I hope you are and I am not offending) http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...tr-newbie.html Again, lots of interesting photos including flight deck.

olybeast for http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...r-dme-lhr.html (If only for the amount of flak taken over '_gate' , but also a genuinely enthusiastic TR)

as well as seconding PETER01 and Sixth Freedom for their excellent TRs both with great photos.

dunk

Thanks for the nominations so far ... keep them coming ^

And for anyone who follows @Flyertalk on Twitter ...

Manx Flyer

Hmmm - definitely a newcomer, but thinking about it, I am not sure I ever finished that TR. Will go back and review.

But if could just plug a future 2014 entry here that I am half way through now (sitting in a hotel in Sydney at the moment!)

Many thanks for remembering it.

ManxFlyer

dunk

I've already found it It's on the '14 list here: http://app1-baft.rhcloud.com/ft%20tr%20list%2014.html

BahrainLad

Excellent, I will try not to win this time. But remember folks, you can find all of my TRs below

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...ndon-city.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...w-a380-hd.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...ndon-faro.html
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...ba-f-a380.html (this has now had almost 350k views on YouTube in just over a month, a new record for me).

stu1985

Thanks for reminding me BahrainLad. I would vote for your report on the A380 to HK for the video report category - I really enjoyed it. I also like that you don't have annoying lift music in your video reports!

I've just given you one more view so you are closer to the 350k mark

edi-traveller

I only did two Trip Report Videos last year - but here's a shameless plug.

BA Club World LGW-Barbados Video

And

BA Club World LHR-LAX on the A380 Video

Sixth Freedom

I nominate this one - epic parody!

Thanks HIDDY. ^

BahrainLad

Thanks! We have Singapore_Air from Airliners.net to thank for it, ultimately. Who can forget the patented 'lavatory paper absorbency test?'