Handshakes across flightpaths

You wouldn't believe how difficult it is to find interesting things to write about in a travel blog when you haven't travelled anywhere yet. However, I have finally gotten an itinerary for my travels which is very exciting.

One of the interesting things about round the world booking is that everyone has their own ideas about how far in advance you can book flights and confirm seats. British Airways, for example, will happily sell you tickets for every day of the next decade or so. They'll also take meal orders, tell you about all the duty free you can buy and would probably even take details on how far you want your seat belt buckle to be able to stretch and fasten so they can do some preliminary fabric stretching for you. Probably.

Other airlines, though, seem to regard the whole business of travel as a bit of a bother. And something which, in an ideal world, they'd really rather not spend their time dealing with, if it's all the same to you. They get rather peturbed if you mention anything about it to them. I have been on the phones to airlines in the past making routine enquiries and can honestly imagine the person on the other end screwing their eyes up in the vain hope that the conversation they're partaking in is all a dream and that if they're very, very quiet I'll assume that they're dead and hang up the phone.

So it's jolly nice that the world's airlines have come together and, in a moment of multinational handshaking that'd make Michael Moore proud, have conspired to help me in my quest of taking a few flights across a few timezones for just a few measly hundred pounds payment. They haven't, however, asked me which newspaper I want to read on each flight. And whether or not I want it ironed.