After five years working for Amadeus, almost all of that time being based in the Madrid head office, the time has come to say goodbye to Spain, but not to Amadeus. I’ve recently accepted a position managing Airline IT Sales based in Chicago where I’ll be mainly focused on sales to North American airlines. I’ll be moving over there with my family once the US work permit is sorted out in the coming months. Hopefully they are a little faster than the Spanish authorities who took five months to approve my work permit back in 2005; they didn’t exactly roll out the red carpet for Australians, but living in Spain really has been an amazing experience. I’m confident that living in Chicago will be just as rewarding.

The picture above shows the Amadeus Chicago office in the left of shot. I’ll be working for Dwayne Ingram who in the relatively short time he has been with Amadeus has been putting together a strong team, most recently with the addition of Scott Alvis. I only met Scott for the first time this week, but I look forward to working with both he and Dwayne and the rest of the team in building a stronger Amadeus presence with airlines in the Americas, particularly North America.

Finally, I’m still undecided how American I need to become in order to succeed in the US. I suppose I’ll have to drop the double ‘l’ in traveller and also drop the ‘u’ in humour and harbour etc; but still not sure if I’ll have to succumb to the job title inflation that the Americans do so well. At this stage I’m planning to go with the simple title of Martin Collings, Airline IT Sales. Although if the doors aren’t opening, I’ll be sure to relent by sticking a VP in there somewhere and play more by local rules!

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