After the City: How to travel in style

One by one they went and now I've lost them all! Airline loyalty cards were one of the major perks of the job and their expiry one of the more painful aspects of my recent retirement.

I was particularly sad to say goodbye to my Virgin gold card, as I still frequently fly in their (increasingly awful) cattle class on long haul flights.

I used to love retiring to the peaceful haven of their Upper Class lounge, to get tanked up on decent wine before hitting the horrors of the back of the plane, while leaving my two children in the capable hands of the lounge staff. They never got fazed even when they proceeded to trash the place.

Now that the gold card has gone, the incentive to fly Virgin has gone with it. Given the most recent downgrade of their service, I shall no longer be darkening the aisles of their planes. Sir Richard take note - there must be some way of allowing former acquirers of large amounts of airmiles to remain in the club?

Business travel is a curious thing. It is one of the first areas to come under scrutiny when belts are being tightened. Yet, given that company travel departments never buy bucket-shop seats nor put you on Easyjet, the difference between the full fare economy ticket and business class is - at least for short-haul travel - scant to say the least.

In my last job one of the tasks I had to do (that is, that my long-suffering secretary had actually to do) was organise European roadshows for visitors from Japan.

They took place about once a fortnight and lasted 10 working days. I had to work out the schedule, taking in London, Edinburgh, sometimes Glasgow and Manchester and seven or eight European countries, visiting cities from Dublin to Rome, Stockholm to Madrid.

The simple option of setting a template and sticking to it invariably failed and every time a new route had to be sorted out.

Very often the roadshow would take in more than one city, and often more than one country, in a single day. The visitor from Tokyo, with a relay of accompanists from my team, would regularly take as many as three flights per day.

Trying to explain to the corporate travel department that flying business class was not a question of lording it for perks and better food, but a necessary logistical tool, was a losing battle. I lost it every time.

Its advantages were shorter check-ins, better hand luggage allowances (waiting for the carousel was always out of the question), being closer to the front of the plane for a quick escape and, most importantly, the ability to miss the plane - as one frequently did - without penalties

However, I had my strategies. The one that worked best was to book a flight schedule (economy class, of course) and request that tickets be issued early. Once I had them, I would rearrange the entire trip. This necessitated upgrades on all legs.

It was quite remarkable how the ticket-bookers upstairs fell for it every time, but then my secretary was very good at her job. Sometimes, however, I would be floored by arranging the fake schedule, then not being able to get seats on the required real schedule and then - havibng to panic!

Another trick was simply to upgrade oneself at the airport before leaving. It usually cost about 30. Generally I would put it on my corporate plastic and submit an expenses claim.

No-one ever questioned the expenditure - obviously, you couldn't expect the accounts department to talk to the travel department - but I always had a good excuse for the upgrade had they done so.

Flying long haul was a different game. Latterly, the bank decreed that all flights under eight hours (which included New York) were to be flown economy, unless one was going straight into a meeting, which of course I always contrived to be. (Whether I was or not was another question entirely).

However, my frequent trips to Tokyo were completely restriction free. Except that we weren't allowed to fly Virgin.

Never one to be daunted by the regulations, I discovered that staff in our Tokyo office were not only allowed to fly Virgin, they were positively required to do so.

This seemed an ideal means of bypassing my long-suffering friends in the travel department and, let's face it, great fun for me in coming up with yet another scam to do exactly as I pleased.

It also saved the company a large amount of money for which I never reaped my just reward.

Every time a member of my team went to Tokyo for the first time, they would buy a one-way Virgin Upper Class ticket on their personal credit card. On arriving in Tokyo, the accounts department - far less red tape than in London - would hand over the cash in exchange for the receipt.

Tokyo would then buy an open-ended return to London and back. The ticket was valid for up to a year but in practice we went back every six months or so. Travel departments, take note. The round trip ticket sourced in Tokyo is less than half the cost of a round trip ticket sourced in London.

The last time I used my ticket back from Tokyo is now eighteen months ago. I had not anticipated that it would be my last jaunt up front.

It was a memorable riot of colleagues, clients and competitors (we all tended to fly, sheep-like, at about the same time) and, after nearly 13 hours sitting at the bar, having drunk the plane out of champagne, hubby recalls that I arrived home that day in a state that was less jet-lagged than jet-completely-wiped-out.

It was a few weeks after my enforced leap into retirement, which came unexpectedly some three months after that inebriated flight, that I remembered my unused return ticket to Tokyo.

Try as I might, and believe me I did, I just couldn't convince Virgin to buy the ticket back from me without going through the Tokyo travel office of the bank.

Red tape may have been scant in that department but, sadly, even they weren't going to fall for handing over large amounts of yen to an ex-employee.

So I kept the ticket. I wasn't going to give my former employer the pleasure of getting its money back!

candiapeterson@hotmail.com