browserden

Great read! More please!

layz

Obviously c-w-s wouldn't want to be on ITV, the home of Jeremy Kyle! Let's see if Channel 5 are interested.

dylanks

I was living in Los Angeles doing my university studies at the time of the Northridge quake. They do earthquake safety drills where you learn that you're supposed to get under the door frame. I was thrown across the room when I tried to stand up. I ended up rolling under my desk and waiting it out. My roommate at the time, a Los Angeles native, was unfazed and didn't leave his bed. He had a good laugh about it. It was at that point that I decided I would probably not buy a house in California.

corporate-wage-slave

Many thanks for your comments and thoughtts, golfmad, Jagboi, paulwukAeroWesty, Stez, bobbob1976, browserden, layz and dylanks (and greetings from PHX Sky Harbor lounge B, apparently it's 37 celsius outside so I'm staying inside!).

So:

• Most enjoyable flight: LCY to GRX - comfortable, great service, I enjoyed it.
• Least enjoyable flight: GRX to MAD - kind of obvious I think.
• Best meal - mmm, tricky, I did like that LCY breakfast, but US' EDI to PHL has to claim this one on balance.
• Best airport experience: PHL
• Worst airport experience: LCY
• Worst experience overall: Spanish taxi drivers, but that's stating the obvious.
• Best lounge: the beloved CCR
• Number of personal greetings (excluding CCR): One! By a T5 gate agent too.
• Number of kisses from Ann: Six
• Best tourist experience: Alhambra - Granada.
• Most unexpected experience: toss up between PHL's arrival procedure and 6.0 earthquake. Probably the earthquake.
• Best hotel: Canary Wharf Hilton.

Recent things that have made travel more enjoyable:
Apps that do all kinds of thing.
Kindles (so I can read The Times at breakfast in San Francisco)
Inflight Wifi
and the whole internet integration piece, so listening to the Today Programme while airborne over Utah is no big deal.

Recent things that have made travel less enjoyable:
Slight increases in security processes maybe? I don't really get bothered by this, but it would be nice if TAS pre-check was introduced to the UK.
Congestion in the skies, leading to delays in landing and take off.

Right, onwards and upwards.

Jordan D

Other than wanting to get TSA-Pre Check and Global Entry (another story for another time), can I say once again how excellent this thread has been.

Too early to nominate for the Trip Report of the Year on the BAEC forum?

oliuk

Wow CWS great report, very interesting to read - thank you and safe onward travels.

dylanks

Yes, and it's actually below average for this time of year! Good choice to stay inside. PHX has recently greatly improved the food selection, replacing many chains with local favorites.

Thanks again for the report, and enjoy the rest of your trip.

Markagh

Thanks CWS for a great read, very interesting.

dujardin

Thank you very much, C-W-S, for this thread. Please do know that your hard work in writing this up is much appreciated by many. Many valuable tips, information and insights, very well written, with just the right dose of Britishness. This is the kind of stuff which makes the FT BAEC board worthwhile... ;-)
Happy travels and stay safe.

Petrus

Great job CWS. Well done.
Starting next week I'll be doing 4 SK Plus sectors a week for a month Perhaps I should do something similar to your report.

johnnie69

I think perhaps you should ^
I've enjoyed CWS report immensely and would be great to have a another FF view as well

BA5E

Yes the trend needs to be kept up.^

dylanks

Definitely, I think the type of report is not done enough, and I think it's great to learn tips and optimizations from other frequent travelers.

I would be happy to do one for my next set of business trips as well, but it's not as exciting as it's all US/AA travel, and it's "only" 8 sectors in 4 weeks. But if there's interest, I'll write something up as I go. It is 1000 TP though, given the 2000+ mile trips on US F.

dutch_122

CWS, really interesting trip report, the discipline, love it ^

Thank you for sharing this.

layz

First time I've got the DLR to this hotel believe it or not and strangely enough I couldn't see any Hilton signage on the building on the side that's facing the DLR.

Although it's easy to spot from the train itself.

To LCY I'd normally get a taxi from there, not that the public transport options are poor (they're not) but because it's close enough to be good value (Hailo will quote £17 fixed fare for a black cab from this hotel).