Five Thousand Thank You’s – #5000andBeyond

When I hit publish on this article, I’ll pass a milestone I never thought of when I starting blogging just over 7 years ago when I started an annoyance of a blog called GhettoIFE and grew it into Economy Class and Beyond – The blog will hit 5,000 published posts

Over the past 5000 posts, things have evolved and changed. I’ve gone from writing about credit cards and long trip reports to a lot more passenger experience focused blog, a routes and networks analysis, and of course, ultra long trip reports.

Who remember this – the Original GhettoIFE? And what is GhettoIFE?

The Mustard Era. I really must had been eating odd things at that time (via the Wayback Machine). Atlanta was… an interesting trip.

GhettoIFE’s last Blogger.com iteration. I went grey. Not my hair mind.

When Economy Class and Beyond joined BoardingArea as GhettoIFE.

And a lot of this has come from hard lessons, mistakes, late hours, emergency typo changes. It’s also come with a lot of learning (such as how to talk to press offices, talking and understanding PR languages and keeping on top of my editing).

I’ve kept some things at the core of this blog – a sense of humour and a sense of wonderment – and I feel it’s those things that have helped make this blog a little different to the run of the mill blog.

There are many, many thank you’s I have to give though today to get to this point.

• Firstly, my friend Ellie who was the one who was the impetuous to set up this blog and write about things. I don’t think she realised what she kicked off.
• My early supporters – including Ben of One Mile at Time who blogrolled me early on and helped get me on the right path.
• My Parents – who probably wonder why the hell I’m typing like a whirling dervish, and accept I go to sleep late at night to type.
• John Walton – As well as giving me a kick early on, has proved to be a good friend and I value his friendship and madcap ideas… as well as his epic trips to Japan
• Randy Petersen – who gave me the chance to write on Boarding Area and I am forever grateful for that chance. 
• The team at Boarding Area and the House of Miles who have helped nurture this blog, as well as help me with some of my mad-cap ideas
• Mary Kirby of RunwayGirl fame – someone who gave me the belief I could actually write an article, and make it stick
• Jason of #TravelCat fame – for giving me the confidence to go to a seat manufacturers booth, and muscle my way into the booth to ask questions
• Those from the British Midlands International Flyertalk forum before it was shuttered. Those were happier times.
• My many, many, many friends on Twitter. Waaaaay too numerous to mention fairly, but shout-outs to StarflyerGold, Jeanne (of Le Chic Geek), Jonk, Ester,  and many, many, more.
• All the airlines, the employees and those who I encountered who have formed of the story of Economy Class and Beyond.
• And finally – all of my readers. That includes you if you’re reading this blog entry now, and being part of the reason why I still write this thing on a semi-daily basis. Thank you for putting up with mis-spellings, awful grammar, variably late articles and extremely sarcastic humour over the past 8 years and 5000 posts.

That’s it isn’t it for 5000 posts and beyond? Nah. I detect a give-away. And it’s going to cost me an arm and a leg as no airline wants to sponsor me.

See me tomorrow when I’ve had more than 5 minutes to think about it.

Again – from the bottom of my editing well – thank you for your continued reading.

Kevin

Welcome to Economy Class and Beyond – Your no-nonsense guide to network news, honest reviews, with in-depth coverage, unique research as well as the humour and madness as I only know how to deliver.

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