The Traveling Man

Before my mother passed away, she told me that when I was younger she often worried that I would be the one of her three children who didn't or wouldn't have the opportunity to see the world.  Both of my siblings had already traveled to Europe before the end of their college days, and for my older sister she actually went in high school after winning an essay contest.  But fate had other ideas for me.  As it turns out, I'm probably the most traveled one in the family.  There are only a handful of states in the U.S. I haven't been to, and I've traveled throughout Europe, South America, Asia, and have even been to the Middle East.

I started traveling a few years out of college, during a time in Silicon Valley when spending was much looser and freer than it is today.  I worked for a relatively small company, joining somewhere around the 600th employee.  The company had an in-house travel agency, which is probably rather strange now that I think about it, given how small the company was.  The company had a travel policy that allowed for business class on international travel, something that most companies today have given up on, in exchange for cost savings.  Back then there were also a lot more behind the scenes deal-making, and some how our in-house travel agency finagled free upgrades for employees on various carriers, so inevitably whenever I was traveling internationally, I would actually fly first class, instead of business.

Fast forward to the present and for most companies, travel budgets have been slashed over the last few years.  My company used to have a policy that if you flew more than four international trips in a year you could fly in business class, but that policy has since changed, and business class travel has been removed from the list of perks to employees.  Not that I had been traveling much over the last few years anyway, with the downturn and recession.  Travel though in the last few months has begun to pick up, and there's a definite recovery under way, especially in high technology.  Last year I was able to travel to Buenos Aires and Berlin.  Last week, I had a business trip to Kuala Lumpur and Manila.

My travel was in coach, on very cramped and full airplanes.  So no more traveling in luxury.  And as it turns out it's even difficult to earn miles, another small perk of flying for business.  Most airlines have now restricted mileage earning on partner airlines to only fares paid on higher classes of service.  For example, since I have frequent flyer status on American Airlines, I generally try to fly on a partner of American when flying to Asia (since American doesn't fly to Asia themselves), in order to earn miles on American.  In this case Cathay Pacific is an American partner, so I booked my travel last week mostly on Cathay Pacific.

It wasn't until after I booked my flights, that I realized that not all my flights would accumulate mileage on American.  Cathay Pacific had changed their terms so only full fare economy flights would garner mileage and status on American.  This was a change they had implemented in July of 2012.  It turns out almost every airline implemented this change on partner airlines, making it more difficult to accumulate miles when flying on routes that your primary airline does not fly.  Rather than forgo earning almost 9000 miles on half my trip, I paid to have my fare upgraded to the tune of $360 out of my own pocket so I could fly in a fare class to earn miles.  I didn't get a better seat, or more comfortable ride, but at least I'll accumulate miles toward status, which enabled me to use the lounges in Manila, Hong Kong and San Francisco on this most recent trip.

As for the trip itself, it was a success.  I met with customers and partners, and even got to visit the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, widely recognized to be the third tallest building in the world, as this was my first trip to Malaysia.  Both Malaysia and Manila had warm weather up in the 90s, which was a nice change from the freezing mornings we've had in the Bay Area for the last couple of months.  I was gone for just the week, so it was a quick trip to Asia, as easily 45 or more hours were spent on airplanes and in airports.