We’re the only ones who can get us out of this,” Sally Ernst tells me. The “this” she’s referring to is the global economic downturn of the past two-plus years. And the “we” she’s talking about aren’t corporate executives or bank chairmen or politicians—they’re entrepreneurs.

Ernst—the president of the United Kingdom chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), a worldwide network of some 7,300 business owners in 42 countries—makes that declaration 48 hours after a group of about 200 Americans arrived in London last month. This is the last of three such collections of entrepreneurs and small-business owners who British Airways paid to bring to London, part of a marketing and PR effort to boost awareness of its business-travel services. Flights came from New York, Los Angeles, and this last one from Chicago.

From impromptu meetings before they boarded their flight in Chicago to back-to-back lectures they got from experts in London to a reception hosted by Ernst to their own networking sessions, I trailed along to track the exploits of a handful of American entrepreneurs for a yearlong Portfolio.com project. Here’s what I saw during a whirlwind trip that took me from Chicago to London and back to my home in Charlotte.

Business Speed Dating at 35,000 Feet

It’s afternoon, around 2 p.m., but I and the rest of those ticketed to fly on a charter British Airways flight have entered that no-time time of modern travel. The conversations start in the airline’s lounge at O’Hare International and bleed over onto the airplane taking us over the Atlantic. They’ll last all night.

One person speaks of his planned trip to Pondacherry, India, to meet with the software-development team that makes his business possible. One talks of his idea to change the game of golf through a computer application. Still another was ultimately on his way to Singapore to explore opportunities for his IT firm.

Business cards fly back and forth. People walk the aisles of the airplane meeting and greeting. Movies, books, and even Kindles are ignored. Introductions are made. Sitting across the aisle to my left is a book agent traveling from New York to London by way of Chicago for a series of meetings in London.

"How’s the publishing picture in the U.K.?" I ask. It’s tough, he says, just like it is in the States. Supermarket chains are cutting into sales at bookstores, driving down prices, shrinking the market to bestsellers, and crowding out other books.

But not all is grim, not by any stretch of the imagination. The agent has an idea for another business. And so, it seems, does everyone I talk to, all of them bubbling with business schemes.

“As I listened to people spouting about their passions, I spouted right back, and we flooded the room with ideas, dreams, and ambitions to revolutionize nearly every sector of business, government, and philanthropy,” writes Nicole Donnelly, one of the entrepreneurs Portfolio.com will be following this year.

The buzz on the plane continues through the night—business speed dating at 35,000 feet.

In the business-class seat to my right sits a man with an already-successful Web-based business. But he wants to talk about something else. He’s working, he says, with a group that’s going to change the world, tapping into trash for energy. We agree to stay in touch. His enthusiasm is infectious. I’m somewhat convinced that his idea, and the people he’s working with, could actually do as he suggests and change the world.

It’s almost as if the rules of the game have been suspended, almost as though the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression hadn’t happened. On this one trip, people are making big plans, and their business dreams are very much alive. American entrepreneurs are reaching out to the world.

The biological rules are broken too. No one sleeps much. I grab maybe an hour and a half, if that, somewhere over the Atlantic. We arrive at Heathrow Airport still revved, still talking with each other as we board the bus to the London Hilton on Park Lane, overlooking Hyde Park, where golden leaves cling in patches to the trees and carpet the still-green grass.