Is it likely someone would be going to Boston for 2 nights for work ?

[bigchris]

Its a 7 And a half hour flight

Boston is often a quicker flight time than that. It's often just under 7 hrs there and 6 hrs back. Feels like short haul sometimes!

I am amazed that this much business travel still happens, surely unnecessary in many cases.

Long haul pilots do this - and don't have the luxury of sleeping on the plane! There are pilots doing "back-to-back" trips to NY and Boston, which is basically 4 transAtlantic flights in 5 days. Two nights in the air with no sleep, two nights in a hotel.

And people wonder why they're legally restricted to 900 flying hours per year! Imagine how much more they would be made to do if airlines could get away with it...

But pilots are doing it for their job and they have to be there.

They can't fly the plane by video conference, but I do wonder if it could be used more for all these meetings.

For example, I am going to a one day meeting/conference in another European country in a few weeks. I will be flying and going there and back in a day, albeit a very long day - due to the flight times, I'm likely to be out of the house 16-18 hours.

Listening to some piece about climate control, I started to think about the alternatives - there's no video conference available, which would work for this sort of event, so that's a shame.

I could go on the ferry, but then that would turn about 30 miles round trip to the airport and two one hour flights into 150 miles of driving and two overnight ferries, so I have no idea which is 'greener' of the two options, but obviously the ferry option is far more time consuming and will be much more expensive.

It is very bad for the environment all right. Probably the way to stop it is to tax the hell out of it, until businesses feel the pain and are forced to do more by videoconference.

Of course, that point will also make leisure travel unaffordable again to the vast majority.

Post DC I enjoy the flights. I try not to work, I find it hard to concentrate and I lot of what I do isn’t suitable for a plane seat. It’s 5-11 hours of reading and watching whatever I want while someone else brings me drinks and snacks, it’s great.

I wouldn’t want to do it more than once every 6-8 weeks though.

Boston is an easy trip as loads of direct flights from the U.K. and a relatively short flight. A quick trip can be easier on the jet lag if you get your timing right. I once went to Korea for 14 hours for a major event. It was important that someone from our company was there and would have been noticed and caused offence if we weren’t. No one else was free but I had absolutely nothing else I could do in Korea so did it in the most efficient way I could. Direct flights so lots of sleep and I felt surprisingly fine.

I am not proud of my carbon footprint and I encourage as much carbon efficient working as I can, but sometimes you just have to do what you have to do.

Yep, DH. Plus I went to visit him. Boston is fab and I’d go at any chance.

Yup. Work in London Monday morning, then fly Monday evening (London), arrive Monday night (Boston), all day meetings Tuesday and Wednesday, fly Wednesday night, arrive back in London Thursday morning. Straight to work a full day in London after shower and breakfast. Pretty much zero sleep for 3 nights (2 in Boston and 1 on plane

is there a reason these meetings can't be done via conference call. Seems an obscene amount of carbon emission just to talk to people

I hate that I am made to feel guilty for one short haul flight a year when people are flying like this for meetings.

is there a reason these meetings can't be done via conference call.

Judging by my own dear employer, all the people doing lots of air travel for work will also be doing a ton of video conferencing and multinational phone calls.

Yeah. I went to Mumbai once for two nights. A colleague got shunted to New Zealand for one meeting, didn't even stop a night there as he had to be home for something on the weekend.

Yes, I've done it twice. Worst jet lag of my life.

@vikkimoog it’s not an either/or, ie I spend most of my life in VC meetings but yes there gets to a point in a project where it’s easier to do face to face. Most of what I do is with people overseas and once a relationship is established, then VC is fine but when you’re establishing an external relationship it’s still easier to do face to face. Or a different example, in a few weeks time, I am doing a European day trip. Someone has complained about my team. Again, I could do a one hour meeting by VC, hear their complaint and talk it through. I know it will go better if I go over there and spend the day with them including lunch.

I am explaining rather than justifying. Aside from the carbon footprint, from a personal perspective, business travel is hard work on the body and also hard work when you have young children.