I’m sitting in the Panorama Lounge at Zurich Flughafen after a very productive day trip to Zurich to work with one of my agencies. Nobody should undertake business travel without weighing up the pros and cons but some times, many times, a conference call – no matter how long and tortured – will not cut it. And so it was today – a very quick and nimble completion of the task in front of us. The sort of creativity that is only possible when humans are in the room. Together.
But back to the Lounge. And an excellent article in today’s Independent by John Walsh. He not only reviews the latest US drama series ‘Pan Am’ (due to land on BBC2 in November) but also tips a wink at that bygone age of jet travel.
If I can I will post a link to the article but meanwhile here is a great paragraph;
“Pan Am’s first transatlantic flight was on 26th October 1958: the plane was a Boeing 707 jet called Clipper America. And with it, the era of the jet-set was born : a brave new world of sophistication, power haircuts, Playboy Club membership, dry martinis, suburban adultery, golfing trousers and hotel-bar seductions, all accompanied by the manly crooning of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jnr”.
I don’t know about you but I would gladly swap today’s rather sterile execution of air travel for this – okay maybe not the suburban adultery – and one can only hope that British Airways new retrospective based advertising campaign projects some of that romanticism forward.
Meanwhile a glance at my calendar shows that I am due to fly on the 26th October from New York to Shanghai, twice the length of that first Pan Am transatlantic crossing but probably with only a fraction of the style. I’ll get Dimitri on 14th and 7th to give me the best power haircut he can and hopefully they will be able to rustle up a decent martini onboard…….who am I kidding.