Frequent Fliers Anonymous - breaking the circle.

[pauly7]

I see the bulging stomach that cough food and the impossibility of routine, of exercise and so forth, that this lifestyle has brought.

I ****ing hate queues and airline food.

I totally get your sentiment. Don’t do queues well

I’m lucky and have worked to a position where I can dictate my travel levels a bit more and have built talent in my team to share the load around. I also stipulate very expensive travel budgets to clients to dissuade them from too much face to face! Can you make it more difficult for people to ask you to travel?

Your lifestyle and impossibility of routine for exercise and eating well is just an excuse though sorry, agree that travel and time zone changes make it harder but my team and I are religious about health taking first priority when we travel and gym / exercise time is always managed in. Eat sensibly at dinners no matter how tempting. Pot plant your drinks when out with boozy clients - I think I killed a plant at a function with some Russians once

Frequent long haul travel is not directly amenable to a healthy lifestyle but I still do think it can be sustainable. I hope you find the balance you are after in 2019 Juddles.

Agree definitely can be sustainable and just as healthy too if you work hard at it. A guy was doing push-ups on my eka380 flight a few weeks ago

 

[juddles]

.........Your lifestyle and impossibility of routine for exercise and eating well is just an excuse ......
Agree definitely can be sustainable and just as healthy too if you work hard at it. A guy was doing push-ups on my eka380 flight a few weeks ago

pauly7, yes and no. I admit that my excesses in some areas are part of the problem, and take full responsibility for that. And agree that many many people manage to include a great fitness and health level despite travel. But I also think there is an aspect - "jetlag" - that is very detrimental to your body, no matter how you attempt to manage it. Perhaps my specific travel movement exacerbated this part for me - if each couple of weeks you swap from Australia to South America or vice versa, the time change is almost exactly 12 hours - I would go for days with broken, almost impossible sleep, then have a week or so "normal", then back again and cycle repeats. I was never able to find a way to get around that, and such poor rest simply cannot be healthy.

I also would like to comment that your zeal in the making the travel experience the healthiest possible for your team is admirable - they are truly lucky!

 

[kamchatsky]

Good luck with the new job and hopefully you won't get itchy feet too soon (from lack of flying).

I have spent the last 2 weeks in the office in Sydney and am so ready to kick back off again next week. Combining the frequent flying and time away from home aspect, I think there are some great benefits to being on the road for work a lot depending on your personal circumstances. It means I spend little of my own money during the week, get to eat great food in a different city, have some of my laundry done (big plus for a single guy) and earn plenty of points to spend on my time with friends and to see family.

Frequent long haul travel is not directly amenable to a healthy lifestyle but I still do think it can be sustainable. I hope you find the balance you are after in 2019 Juddles.

Thank you. I don't think I would get itchy feet, as I have 2 small kids at home and all they think was that I was travelling for holiday all the time, whilst they are at home

I certainly don't miss very early wakeups and late night flights.

 

[TonyHancock]

.....But I also think there is an aspect - "jetlag" - that is very detrimental to your body, no matter how you attempt to manage it.

The impact of jet lag probably won't be fully understood for may years and then the variances for each individual will make it impossible for generic advice/treatment to be provided. The impact on the endocrine system varies from individual to individual so the "treatment"/behaviours required to manage it vary from individual to individual. I am one day into a three day trip to Berlin after arriving back in Australia from the UK five days ago. My resting heart rate has risen appreciably since January 1st and I am avoiding carbohydrates completely because I know my blood sugar will rise quickly and remain high if I have bread/potatoes/pasta/rice/fruit etc. Sleep plays a big part in the body's management of insulin/glucose - and of course everyone's endocrine system is different. What may impact me may have no impact on another person.

I have two years, less hopefully, and it will be a change of roles/lifestyle for me. Travel will become an occasional treat rather than the norm. I cannot maintain my current travel patterns and hope to keep my health as I grow older.

 

[pauly7]

. But I also think there is an aspect - "jetlag" - that is very detrimental to your body, no matter how you attempt to manage it.

I do agree that jet lag saps a special ‘life force’ or perhaps soul from you that takes a while to build back up, especially when you are standing under the flickering neon lights in a second/third world country immigration queue (oh and the US ).

I have an ironclad routine (including taking tablets, exercise and certain foods) to help hard reset myself as quickly as humanly possible.

Your travel patterns sound like something out of a horror movie though to me

 

[juddles]

It has been a bit of a torture

In a previous job I was only working in Queensland - but back then that involved constant "revolving" shift work. IE spending a week or so doing early shifts 6a-2p, then a week of 2p - 10p, and then 10p-6a, and then start all over again. That was horrid too but not as bad for me personally as what jetlag does to me! In that previous job I got a role for several months that involved standard hours, Mon to Fri. It was an amazing period. I would get up at dawn and go to the pool for laps before starting work each day, I would do gym stuff every evening, and do a long run every two days. Felt amazing. I am now into the first two weeks of a similar period - no long haul flights for at least a couple of months. Trying to make the most of it, and see if I can sort out a longer system where I can reach some sort of balance.

Until 2010 I had never understood FF programs, etc - had no status - but then discovered AFF. I seized on the whole thing as a way to make travel so much better. In my first year of AFF membership I got so far as to do such things as a BNE-SYD-HNL-LAX-DEN-DFW-ORD-MIA-PTY-BOG-MDE-BOG-PTY-MIA-DFW-SEA-LAX-HNL-SYD-BNE, just to get up to WP asap. And at the time it was new, I had a mission, and I loved it.

And as addictive as I am, WP then was not enough, and I spent the next few years chasing LTG, etc. Took it as far as having top status with three different airlines. Fun fun fun. After LTG I then just made sure that I flew the best I could, but also maintaining P1, as I do really enjoy that status. Bought fares during DSC promotions a couple of times that in the end I didn't need to re-qual anyway, and spent 2018 exploring carefully what P1 status even meant for me.

So this is how I got to where I am now - no longer in love with status, no longer in love with constant flying, and attempting to change my world to restrict time "lost" from my life whilst flying. BTW, yes I know that to some it can sound like a whinge when you don't even appreciate J travel, but I am blooming 2m tall and that makes that precious thing of sleep hard even up the front.

Maybe, like many things in Life, a good break will reinvigorate the love. I will discover this.

 

[casanovawa]

But why are they doing it? Given the sacrifice in family time etc from business travel it was a way of the family benefitting for me when I travelled a lot for work. That enployer actually encouraged using the points to give the family some benefits.

They do it because they are stingy cough.... The amount of people rorting the system to run up large points totals taking unnecessary flights would be infinitesimal and would be mostly big wigs anyway... But between some idiot stuffing up the WA state budget (being screwed over the GST allocation certainly didn't help) and the fact that everyone wants to have a whinge about public servants, it was expedient to cut that small perk of which public servants get precious few (no bonuses, no xmas parties put on, no nothing pretty much)...

I'd been working in the WA state public sector for 18 years but got sick of the constant spiral of negative views, cut backs, belt tightenings, redundancies calls (which just left everyone doing the same stuff with fewer resources) so I took a voluntary redundancy last year and glad to be out of the place... The last straw was agency amalgamations which will be another screw up like shared services was costing several hundred million $s if not more for sweet fk all return... It makes sense at a certain level but as usual its being stuffed up and agencies are going around in circles for 18 months trying to amalgamate systems, survey their stakeholders, survey staff, merry go round/hot potato of management changes... Ughhh... I think they offered 100 spots for redundancies in my agency and i think it was like 300% over subscribed...

So they can take their stingy frequent flyer ideas and the rest of the cough and shove personally...

 

[casanovawa]

As for the original question, nah, not really losing the love of it, i hardly travelled for work and so when i did I found it a bit of fun... So practically all my flying is self funded leisure... I will take a few J flights, I also take quite a few cheapy Jetstar flights so i find getting into a lounge before flying out is when i consider my holiday has started... When I take my 13 year old with me he also enjoys the lounge visits and the odd J flight... I have held a bit of status but usually by wangling a short cut or deal here and there but my rational thought process has always nixed status chasing... Dunno if that will ever change... If there was someone with partner gold I would probably just be happy to send 50k points there way and make a win-win of it... But maybe i might be able to talk myself sometime into dropping a few grand on a DSC offer if i could do it just after my membership year roles over and could get like platinum for 2 years and then a drop to Gold??? But in general just using points, the odd lounge pass or credit card deal or something i tend to get the most important things of status for me like lounge membership...

I have considered trying to get into hotel loyalty schemes but I am usually just a cheapy hotel user and so they wouldn't make a lot of sense to me in my current and past travels... I often actually just stay in hostels as when i go travelling i am usually up and out exploring cities, taking photos and getting back at night and so i find it hard to justify spending hundreds of dollars on rooms that I will just sleep in... Sometimes my own room and shower would be nice but I have met some interesting people in hostels and had some interesting chats which can be ok when i do nearly all of my travel on my own...

So short answer no not really losing my love and lots of places still to go on my bucket list... But i tend not to stay away as long as i did previously and starting a new job this year i might not be able to put in quite as many travel requests as i have done over several years... Will see how it goes...

 

[amaroo]

As mentioned in other threads - travel with family and you’ll never get sick of it .... or the status.

The kids will have LTG before they leave home - our job is done!

 

[casanovawa]

As mentioned in other threads - travel with family and you’ll never get sick of it .... or the status.

I have to say travelling with my young one i do tend to have at least one little bust up through out the trip over something, and trying to get him off his computer and out doing and seeing things etc, so sometimes travelling on my own is less stressful and lets me go to new places that friends and family would roll their eyes at and veto... But yes travelling with family can certainly have some good bits as well...