Simple – always carry a cheap, simple plain white pillowcase and some string. Really! I have seen this in action – during my chauffering days, many moons ago, I took a client to Heathrow. When we arrived at the terminal, he got out and fiddled around in the boot of the car. “Problem?” I asked. “Not with you, with the airline” came the reply. “Carry on restrictions”

The client whipped out an old, clean, white pillowcase and pushed his laptop and (expensive) briefcase into the pillowcase and tied the whole lot up with twine. “Hey, Presto!” he said, “Only one carry-on”

Being flimsy, a pillowcase fits into any size measuring device, does not add to the weight and can be easily re-packed, once past all the checks.

Now, all we needed was a long pole to tie the pillowcase on to!

True, a lot of the pricing is based on supply and demand but different rules do apply to different fares. The cheapest may be “No Refund… No Changes” – so if you need to change a flight – buy a new ticket. Most fares will remain “No Refund” all through the economy cabin; but where you are in the “fare food chain” will matter when it comes to changes. Though you may have a changeable fare, if it is at the bottom of the fare chain, then chances are, you will have to pay the change fee AND a fare “uplift”. Towards the top of the food chain, you may well get away with just paying the change fee – and sometimes you can get to a reasonable fare, which will stand a good chance of missing the fare uplift if you do need to change.

Sure, if you are 120% certain nothing will change, then take the cheapest… That said, in the business world, is 120% certain enough?

For those who do not know, this affects London from 27th July to the 12th August 2012 – and will also affect dates around this time.

So, what to do? London will be gridlocked from a car point of view. We are to have many “Zil” lanes – and normal Private Hire Vehicles (the ubiquitous E class Mercedes) will not be able to use these. I suggest:

1. Do not plan to travel in or out of London during this time. Make sure any meetings are held either well before or after this date – and certainly, don’t even think of holding (say) a sales conference at this time.

2. If you need to have representation abroad, think of positioning someone outside the UK for the duration.

3. If you must travel, budget accordingly. A hotel room, if one can be found, will be AT LEAST £300 a night – and that will be for a pretty basic affair and could well be some distance from the capital.

4. Be prepared to use public transport. Car travel will be hopeless, so cancel any car transfers and buy a ticket on the Heathrow Express and invest in an “Oyster” card for getting around London.

Bear in mind that this event will affect the periphery of London as well. You have been warned!

This is where the simple return starts to be an issue. Of course, if you are travelling on a full economy or business class ticket, there is no issue. Otherwise, there is.

The way travel works, if you change the outward flight, you have to reprice the whole itinerary. This means that, though the return flight remains unchanged you may still have to pay an increased price for the return flight – and if the return flight is now full, save for a few full price seats that could cost.

The answer is to consider buying two one way tickets. Indeed, these can work out slightly cheaper than a return (or perhaps, slightly more). More importantly, if you change the outward flight, you will not have to re-price the return flight.

The issue this engineer was travelling to resolve had escalated and was beyond his capability… someone else had to go.

Now, being a human travel agent rather than a machine – aka an online agent – I had already heard the amount of to-ing and fro-ing that had preceded this booking. It was quite clear to me that this travel event could go pear-shaped. Consequently, I did not book the cheapest – I told the client that I was going to spend and extra £100 (on his already over £1,200 fare) because I wanted to have the option to cancel the booking at a fee, rather than lose the lot if he did not go. Instead of losing the lot, the client’s cancellation fee was £70.

In this instance, I was correct – but even if it had all gone ahead as planned, that extra £100 was still, I believe, worth it.

Little things like, say, that really nice chap you knew who said that he would help you with your blog … with the hosting, organisation and… and … AND then disappearing into the wide blue yonder as his last-but-one girlfriend decided to go off with Uncle Charlie which made that nice chap really depressed and consequently not pay any of his bills … Yup, you know the story.

So, a decision with Blog Mark 2 – Do things at arms length. You want hosting? Get it from someone reliable, who has been around, has an office with staff and stuff. May cost that much more, but at least they will still be around if someone’s girlfriend-but-one goes all squishy.