As my work continued and I flew more and more, I learned all the tricks to flying all over the place. I came to the point where I was in demand in all sorts of locations. We had a Singapore office that looked after the whole Asia region. I would go out there for 4 to 5 weeks at a time and based out of Singapore I would fly to China, South Korea or Japan to visit customers there. At the same time as expanding our Asia operation, we were looking to open up a new market in Latin America. We found a partner in Colombia, based in the capital city of Bogota. This meant a whole new region to fly to for me, as this whole new market was going to need training.
I was by far the most frequent flyer in the company, but since it was just me, they weren’t really many formal policies on flying. I mentioned previously that they liked me to fly in economy or premium economy but, allowed me to stay extra nights if I wanted to, rather than use business class. After a while I established a system of setting the budget for a trip based on the most suitable direct economy ticket to a location. My second trip to Colombia was coming up and I found that the Colombian national airline, Avianca, operated the only direct flight to London. So, I got their price for a return economy trip, and it was huge. This set my budget for the trip. I then went out to see if I could fly for less with another airline, which of course would mean an indirect flight, but I was ok with that. In the end I found a trip with KLM, in business class, that was cheaper than the direct flight in economy, so that’s what I did. I know that a few of you might be saying, hang on, if it was cheaper in business class on KLM, how much was the economy on KLM? Well yes, I could have saved the company some money by going on a multi-stop flight on KLM in economy. But there’s a very good reason why I didn’t, which I will come back to later.
Suffice to say, the agreement I had with the person who signed my expenses was; find the direct flight cost and if I could find it cheaper another way he didn’t care as long as it was for less.
An unusual route
The route I found was very interesting from a flying enthusiast’s point of view.
Outbound on KLM:
- London to Amsterdam on an Embraer 190.
- Amsterdam to Panama City on a 777.
- Panama City to Bogota on a 737 operated by local company Copa Airlines.
Return was with Air France, who partner with KLM:
- Bogota to Paris on a 787
- Paris to London on an A320
All of this was in business class, which meant I got to compare KLM and Air France’s long-haul options.
KLM had a lovely big seat, slightly offset with the person next to you, so you didn’t feel like they were right beside you. The food, drink and service was excellent. And I did get given KLM’s signature miniature bottle shaped like a Dutch house, containing a Dutch speciality drink.
The Air France trip had the rather unusual lie flat, but not horizontal bed option. The seat did go flat, but it was at a slight angle so your feet were essentially under the head of the person in front of you. I was worried that this would be uncomfortable, but I slept very well. The food was amazing, I couldn’t stop eating the miniature French baguettes they kept bringing me. The flight was delayed which caused some issues at the other end, I’ll come back to that later.
Why didn’t I fly on One World?
By now you know I am a British Airways flyer, living in the One World alliance, and KLM/Air France are both Sky Team members. So why would I fly outside my alliance?
Obviously, there are times when you have to fly with a different airline or alliance, just due to where you are going or when you want to go. There was a One World option open for me to Bogota, I could have flown LATAM (who are no longer One World), via another Latin American country or I could have flown Iberia via Spain. I had done the Iberia route before and I hated it, it was an old A340, no option for premium economy and really didn’t enjoy the service.
Another reason why people sometimes try other airlines is simply because they can. When you have achieved enough tier points to get to the level you want to get to, earning more tier points becomes pointless, as they all get removed at your reset date. For example. If your goal is to get to Silver with BA and you have earned your 600 points to do that, every point after that is wasted unless you think you can reach gold, at 1500 points. My reset date is March, so if I was at 600 in November and I knew I had 2 trips left, I’d know that unless I was flying first class there’s no way I would reach gold. And in March all my points will be reset to zero. So apart from gaining AVIOS, there’s less reason for me to fly One World in that situation. (note as of April 2025 all the above mentioned numbers for BA Exec Club have changed).
As it turned out I was in an even better situation than this. On a previous trip, BA had had a huge computer fault meaning a lot of luggage had been lost and it had all be checked manually, meaning huge delays at the airport. I had only been minorly affected, but since I was flying on the weekend of the computer fault, they had offered me compensation. What they did was gave me a 1-year extension on my Gold status, which meant that the tier points I earned for every flight during that time after the reward, but before my next reset was completely useless, yes I’d get Avios, but nothing that would help me with my status. So, I decided during this time to experiment with other airlines. It was when I used “status matching” to try the Star Alliance, see my article on that, and I flew other airlines that I’d heard good reports about, such as KLM.
Part 4
In part 4 I’ll talk about what was probably the most intensive period of flying I did in my whole career, read it here.
