San Jose is smack bam in the middle of Silicon Valley which means there are people living, working and commuting with serious money.

One of the most visible outcomes are the sheer numbers of private jets that are constantly landing at San Jose Airport. Since our hotel has the perfect view of the jets coming in in line with the room I have been amazed at the numbers!

I have a real love of private jets and totally understand how in the USA where commercial air travel is becoming more and more difficult, with increased security, queues, over booking and the aircraft invariably never running on time. Large corporations do not want their senior executives wasting half a day just to fly an hours flight from LA to SF.

Coupled with the much reduced cost, increased safety and time effectiveness corporations are using companies such as Flexjet, Netjet etc to buy either fractional ownership or to buy time in an aircraft.

We know a few people who own their own private jets in the states, but by far the most popular way to is to buy a time share.

We just don't really have the market for this in Australia, it's the tyranny of distance which means that short routes like Sydney to Melbourne etc are well served by the commercial airlines, whilst the longer haul routes to Asia and beyond are generally not cost effective. At somewhere between 10 - 50 thousand dollars an hour for a jet that can do Sydney LA non stop (the Gulfstream 550) it is pretty much out of the the average corporation's pockets in Australia.

But over here it is simply a way of life and if you have serious money you do not fly commercial. Instead you fly fro one of the small local airports to another small local airport. No queues and no rude staff.

Every time I have flown in the states commercially I have always had problems. A few years ago on a United flight from LA to Chicago a passenger fell ill on the flight and collapsed near the crew bulkhead. Unfortunately for the poor guy he was 'of middle eastern appearance' and rather than provide immediate medical care the crew took up defensive positions on the aircraft and we made a very fast emergency landing into Colorado Springs.

This even after the flight had been delayed two hours and I was almost bumped anyway! The crew were unhelpful as we were forced to wait at Colorado Springs in the aircraft for three hours while they did whatever was required.

Again this last weekend my experience with American was troubled. We were almost 'wait listed' off of our flight to San Jose and put on a flight two hours later. While that may sound OK to some it was already 7 O'clock at night and we both had meetings in the morning, so a late night was not what we wanted. We have learnt though in America and especially LA you pull rank or do whatever you can do to get something done. In this case the boy is an uber level Frequent Flyer which means airline staff are usually extra helpful, and in this case just the foot tapping and simple pointing out of the level of Frequent Flyer was enough to sort the problem out.

Anyway this afternoon we are driving to San Francisco where the boy is working this afternoon then we are having a drink(s) with a friend who now lives here! Then tomorrow it's a day of final shopping with the amazingly ridiculously high Australian dollar and a very late night flight back to Sydney and my puppy dog!

And just to remind you what my beagle looks like...