Would You Like Fries With That, Sir?

This has been a funny week. One of my most enjoyable jobs this week was going shopping for a private jet. It's not often (I know you'll be amazed, but it's true) that I get to do that. Not any old
private jet, either. A 37-seat private jet with cargo hold space for 150 bags is what was called for. Which was more complicated than you'd at first think...

I was truly delighted at the way people reacted to my calls. "Hi. I'm calling from Dubai and I want a sizeable private jet to pull two long-haul flights at less than a week's notice during high season."

Now you'd be forgiven for thinking that a reasonable reaction to that lot would be "Are you kidding me, mate?" but the reality was more like "Certainly Sir. We'll get onto it right away."

Most executive jets come in at under the 15 seat mark. There's actually a sizeable industry built around the sale, leasing, hiring and operations and maintenance of these little high-flying business essentials. However, the requirement for 37 pax meant an altogether larger 'plane. Most of the sub-100 seat 'planes are regional jets which can't do the long haul flight, so you're looking at something like a Boeing 737 or 757 - particularly because we also wanted cargo room for 150 bags.

For much of the week brokers were scouring the market for us while the client's team was also working on the problem (it was the client's team, grrr, that found the best solution in the end!).

The solution turned out to be an Embraer 135 LR, a long range version of the popular Brazilian regional jet that drops 13 seats to give a 37-seat (37 seats! How 'just right' could you get?) 'plane that's still got enough cargo space for the bags.

Alongside that, another client is doing a number of 'classy' events that necessitated investigating the cream of the city's private dining rooms and exclusive venues to find the very best of the lot. In a city packed to the gunwales with five star hotels, that was quite a lavish brief.

A real lalaPR week...

BTW: Shifting pop bands around the world is a pain in the arse, in case you are ever interested in going into the shifting pop bands around the world game...