Work Trip Dilemma

[EmmaJBas]

Hi,

I work for an overseas government.

There’s a big meeting scheduled at HQ next month. My boss advocated for me to go - great!

Catch is that it’s a 12.5hr overnight flight (Monday), straight into work (Tuesday), two full days of meetings, fly home after last meeting (Thursday).

My boss is travelling Business, me Economy.
Total journey time ~16hrs.

Struggle to sleep on flights at the best of times, will be broken and not my best self with my new colleagues and management (been here 5 months). Plus feel a bit devalued.

Proposed to fly indirect at a fraction of of the cost (in Business) but not allowed.
Choice of carrier means can’t even use my own loyalty points to upgrade.

Should I suck it up, get back in my box and feel grateful?

Thoughts welcome and don’t want to be unreasonable. Thank you.

Upgrading you to business instead of allowing you to fly one day earlier or during the day (so you sleep in the hotel) is bonkers. I'm really curious to know how long you've been in this job and what this event is about (if you can share the info, of course)

If you are expected to go straight to work you should be in business on any sensible travel policy. Anything else is bad for your health and bad for the business's performance.

Is there no premium economy option?
in similar circumstances I made up the cost to PE myself.
I have a personal rule that I never do more than 4 hrs in economy and if there’s no other option, I don’t go. There’s just nowhere in the world worth the hell of a long haul economy flight.

We did a similar trip to the west coast of USA a few months ago. Flew out on the Monday to head straight into a drinks reception after a 13 hour flight. Meetings Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday flying home on indirect flights on Friday / Saturday in economy.

Yes it was exhausting and it took a few days to recover, but well worthwhile the effort

Yes, this.

Could they at least give you Premium Economy? It's not perfect, but a lot better than standard Economy.