Chris Saul's Blog

Wednesday September 19, 2007

Expanding the market or increasing market share?

Most passengers on the planes I took to and from New York last week were Indian or of Indian origin - I'd say about 98%. Whether US citizens or not, everyone seemed to be flying via Dubai to get to and from India and the US.

I wonder if those passengers used to use other routes before Emirates opened up its New York flights, or whether the availability of the new route has increased the total numbers of passengers going back and forth?

Considering Air India flies direct to New York from India, the Emirates option must be either a lot cheaper or a lot more comfortable.

What always drives me mad on this route is families not asking to be seated together either when booking their tickets or when checking in. This always leads to about 30 minutes' of musical chairs as half the plane tries to change seats while boarding and just after take-off. I was asked to move both going there and coming back, sitting in two other places before ending back where I'd started each time.

This always seems to happen on the New York route and when flying back to Dubai from Saudi.

VMworld

Had a great time last week in San Fran, attending VMworld.

I had about 120 people at the Sun session, which I spoke at with Chris Kawalek. I was pretty pleased with the turn out and very pleased to be part of the only Sun speaking event there. The rest of the sessions I attended were pretty good - I learnt a fair bit and got to talk to lots of people.

The event was very well organised and ran like clockwork. Top marks to VMware!

As always when in the US I felt incredibly slim and fit, surrounded as I was by a lot of people who were frankly massively overweight. Getting back to Dubai I realised that I was actually a fair bit fatter than when I left - a side-effect of not being able to find much easily available food that didn't consist almost entirely of refined carbohydrates and fat.