Too much travel
While I have been traveling a little less these last few weeks, a look at my three passports — one expiring this month — tells me all I need to know about travel fatigue. I am a member of two frequent traveler programmes, Cathay’s Marco Polo/Asia Miles, Gold card, and Air France’s Flying Blue, Platinum. I did a quick survey of the actual miles flown within the last 12 months — something that was prompted by a question in a recent survey I was “kindly asked” to fill out on a Cathay flight. They were interested in the number of flights, whereas it got me interested in the mileage flown…
Well, with Cathay and DragonAir, I have flown 72,000 actual miles, give or take, in the last 12 months. That’s three times around the Earth. On Air France, I have flown 52,000 actual miles over the last 7 months — I don’t keep records, and AF doesn’t give anything older than 7/8 months’ worth — but as I fly regularly to France, every six weeks, like clockwork, I expect this to be around 88,000 miles. Thus, 140,000 miles, at an average speed of 500 mph, that’s 280 hours spent sitting in aluminium cigars. Of course, in reality, it’s much more time than that wasted on travel, door to door. HK to Seoul takes 2.5 hours, nominally, but from the time I leave my flat until I arrive at my hotel in Seoul, around 8 hours have passed. So for every flight I take I have to add five to six hours on top of flying time.
I flew around 90 one-way flights with Cathay/DragonAir, most of them within Asia — only a couple to France, because AF is way cheaper than Cathay on HK->Bordeaux when the ticket is bought in HK. 90 flights of an average 2 hours, plus say 5 hours transit/waiting, that’s 7 x 90 == 630 hours. With AF, 14 flights to or from Paris + 14 flights to or from Bordeaux, at 12 + 6 hours, 18 x 14 = 252. 882 hours, almost 37 days. Of course, these 100+ flights do mean, in the end, 100 days, parts thereof anyway, spent in airplanes, buses, taxis, and airports. That’s, at 5 days per work-week, 20 weeks spent not working. Of course, for some of the destinations, I manage to meet clients the same day I fly in — especially when I go to Taiwan, or to Shanghai and Beijing. I’ve been known to do day trips to these cities too 
Why spend a night at a hotel when I can be back home..?
All in all, I spent way too much time flying. The first few flights were fun, trying to decrypt announcements in Cantonese, Malay, Mandarin; hacking code on my MacBook — thanks to in-flight electricity supply through EmPower ports… Then came boredom. I started to wish there was a Fast Forward key for the safety presentation, the meals, the whole flight… Then I started recognizing flight attendants from previous flights. Airbus got their name right, I think… It all feels like commuting now.
The craziness will start again soon, as I have inherited (back) three countries from a colleague. And with year-end activities all over the place, I am sure I will rack in enough mileage to pay for my wife’s tickets for quite a few trips…