2012 was another busy travel year for me with work, speaking and personal travel taking me on 41 flights covering around 100,000 miles. If that seems uncharacteristically vague it's because OpenFlights and TripIt can't seem to agree on the miles I covered. OpenFlights says 95,164 miles and TripIt says 112,203 miles. Either way, I've been lucky enough to travel a lot this year and re-qualified for Virgin Atlantic Gold Status for the 5th year in a row. I didn't think that 2012 would be a busy travel year but, once again, I was proven wrong.
I visited 2 new cities, Tallinn and Beirut, both of which were incredible. And it's taken me way too long but I finally flew on the A380 for the first time - it's like being on a cruise ship only it's not completely awful. I racked up first flights on an ATR-72 and a Dash-8, the latter of which was particularly impressive. I also flew on 3 new airlines, Finnair, LOT Polish Airlines and Turkish Airlines, all three of whom were excellent, particularly Turkish Airlines who recently won Best European Airline for the 2nd year in a row. A last minute trip to New York allowed me to experience Virgin Atlantic's new A330s and new Upper Class cabin, both of which were a vast improvement on their predecessors.
As always, here's a list of the cities I've been fortunate enough to visit in 2012 along with some stats that OpenFlights generates.
- San Francisco x 5 - Long Beach - New York x 3 - Paris - Helsinki - Tallinn - Uzès x 2 - Geneva x 2 - Reims x 2 - Vilnius - Seattle - Newcastle - Poznan - Singapore - Shanghai - Beirut
Average Distance: 2321mi Average Time: 5h16m Longest: LHR<->SIN, 6758mi, 14h00m Shortest: TLL<->HEL, 62mi, 00h37m
Airlines: Virgin Atlantic - 12 flights Finnair - 4 flights Lufthansa - 4 flights LOT - 4 flights Turkish Airlines - 4 flights Virgin America - 4 flights jetBlue - 3 flights Flybe - 2 flights Singapore Airlines - 2 flights