Airborne between Paris and Hong Kong on a Global Airlines Boeing 2000ER, John and Jane Harbinger are lingering over lunch in the gourmet restaurant on the top deck (not much point in fast food on a 16-hour flight) figuring how they’re going to spend the rest of the afternoon. Jane decides on a soothing séance in the beauty parlor: John will make a few calls from the business center and polish his presentation. They’ll meet for drinks at six in the suite before dinner. ‘Would sushi hit the spot? I’ll book a table downstairs.’ John asks a passing ‘skycop’ for directions. ‘Head down the main corridor towards the tail and take the elevator down to the bottom deck.’
Planes such as this three-deck 1,000-seat Goliath – which entered service in 2015 – are derived from the 600-seat super jumbos promised (or threatened) by Airbus and Boeing in 1999. They are flying villages, allowing infinite scope for social congress, with half a dozen restaurant concessions – from classical French to McDonalds’ junk food – casinos, shops, cyber-cafes with Internet access, and health clubs. About the only things missing are a pool and an outside jogging track. But you never know!
There is no such thing these days as first, business or economy class. The price you pay depends on your choice of seating, cuisine and entertainment along with the kind of service you want on the ground. Accommodation ranges from standard cattle class and ergonomic sleeper seats with more personal space to air-conditioned cabins with beds, bathroom and butler service, that convert to a daytime lounge. For an extra charge, the airline will deliver a container to your home or office, transport you through the airport and load you onto the plan. Some tycoons have converted their offices into flight containers, re-creating the private railroad cars of a century ago – the ultimate in seamless travel.
Many people travel ‘a la carte.’ You book a seat or cabin and pay extra for meals and in-flight facilities and lounges, limos and other trimmings on the ground. Traveling cattle class is no longer much of an ordeal. You only have to stay in your seat for take-off and landing; the rest of the time you can move around freely. Skycops patrol the crowded aisles ready to deal with unruly or abusive passengers who can threaten not only the well being of other passengers but the safety of the aircraft. After all, on a long-haul flight you can be in the air for up to 18 hours – almost long enough to get married, start a family and get divorced, although not necessarily in that order. Some enterprising agents are using reservations computers to help people choose in-flight companions. They punch in your high-altitude likes and dislikes and match you up with a suitable seatmate.
Global Airlines is one of three mega-carriers that together share 80 percent of the world air travel market – the culmination of the giant airline alliances and code-sharing deals that carved up the skies in the late 1990s. These compete with consortia of regional airlines in Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia Pacific, along with half a dozen long-haul carriers mainly serving the business market.
Code sharing, whereby two or more airlines operate the same flight, and ‘block seat’ arrangements, whereby one airline sells seats on another airline’s flights, became commonplace by 2000. The abundance of space on the superjumbos allowed several airlines to share the same plane with their own fares, flight attendants, in-flight cuisine and service.
This led to the concept of the ‘virtual’ airline. You don’t need to own aircraft and infrastructure when you can ‘brand’ your own cabin in a superjumbo. Travel agents can buy blocks of seats (and hotel rooms) and market them under their own brands to corporate customers.
Since 1999, superjumbos – along with advanced technology for better control of the airways with new satellite navigation systems and new airports and terminals – have diminished the specter of gridlock in the skies by quadrupling air traffic capacity since 1999. But the challenge was daunting. Since 1999, air traffic has been growing at around 10 percent a year.
Thus the number of passengers has doubled every seven years, reaching a staggering 20 billion in 2020. Where are all these people going? And, more to the point, why do they all seem to be going with me?
The growth of tourism in China has been phenomenal. The Chinese government set the ball rolling when it cut the working week to five days, giving the nation’s workers an extra half-day off a week.
This was even better news for the travel trade, because – assuming a workforce of 750 million from a total population of 1.2 billion – it meant an extra 15 billion days’ leisure time coming on stream. And with more disposable income and the liberalization of passports, the Chinese have become international travelers.
According to the World Tourism Organization, China now generates more out-bound tourism than any country in the world apart from Japan, Germany and the United States. China has also become the world’s top tourist destination with 137 million visitors in 2020.
The world’s top 30 airports will handle more than 16 billion passengers this year. The traditional mega-hubs such as Chicago O’Hare, Los Angeles International, Atlanta, London Heathrow, Hong Kong’s Chek Lap Kok and Singapore’s Changi are bursting at the seams, each handling around 200 million passengers a year. But an airport building boom, especially in Asia, has added capacity. China has built more than 50 new airports since 1999.
Meanwhile, the creation of ‘wayports,’ or new hubs, in remote parts of Norway and Siberia has siphoned off a large amount of connecting traffic. More than 30 percent of the people milling around Heathrow, for example, were simply trying to get somewhere else.
Supersonic travel has become space age with Orbitol, a 50-passenger space plane that travels in low earth orbit enabling it to fly from London to Sydney in 45 minutes. Unlike the old space shuttles, Orbitol takes off and lands under its own power. After accelerating through Mach 5 to 80, 000 feet, the plane leaves the atmosphere, continues to accelerate and becomes a satellite itself after reaching 250,000 feet – around four times the cruising altitude of Concorde – with an orbital velocity of Mach 25 to 30.
More down to earth, high-speed maglev (magnetically levitated) trains traveling at 300 miles per hour have replaced air travel on journeys of up to 500 miles, releasing slots at major airports, most of which have train stations, for long-haul traffic.
Regional airlines serve ‘thinner routes,’ enabling business travelers to avoid mega-hubs. Thus ‘regional long-haul’ services allow travelers to fly point-to-point between cities such as Manchester and Osaka, Seattle and Perth, Stuttgart and San Francisco.
Mega-hubs, with a larger daily population than many major cities, are no longer a means to an end but an end in itself, destinations in their own right. They form a worldwide network of alternative cities – what you might call the terrestrial equivalent of space stations – with their own business communities and civic amenities, hotels and conference centers. Who needs to go downtown when you are already there? Many people don’t travel to cities any more, just to airports.
John Harbinger, on-line to his office in Broken Springs, Colorado, asks himself a routine question: whether he really needed to make this trip.
Technology enables (and requires) him to be totally wired at all times. The No. 1 rule for business travelers is wherever you are, always to be on the phone to somewhere else. So why travel? John rationalizes that this is a working vacation – a chance to bring Jane along. He’s looking forward to a round of golf with his Chinese associates. And he and Jane plan to take off for a five-day airship cruise among the Hong Kong islands.
Modern airships are safe, comfortable, and environmentally friendly, as they sail and hover less than 100 feet above the ground. An airship cruise is a spectacular way to see many wonders of the world, such as the Amazon and what’s left of the rain forests in Brazil and Peru, chateaux of the Loire, fly along the Nile to see the pyramids, explore Venice or make an air safari in Kenya.
‘Virtual conferencing,’ has done away with the need for many business trips. A 100-inch (256 centimeter) illuminated high-resolution screen with ‘wrap-around’ sound makes everyone seem life-like and gives the illusion that you’re in the same room. This means that you can participate normally in the discussion; using the same body language.
Travel was in danger of becoming an end in itself. I am therefore I travel: I travel therefore I am. Travel is about human interaction, hands-on experience. Getting the best return on your ‘interaction expense’ is a trade-off between cost in terms of time, money and hassle and the opportunity of staying doing something more productive somewhere else.
Of course, there’s sometimes a need to be somewhere in person – the eye contact, the real, compared to the cybernetic, handshake, the impromptu meeting and, of course, the social dimension can be pure gold. It is not something you can quantify; it’s intuitive, gut feeling. Who goes to a conference to listen to the speakers? You can pick up a transcript or receive it live in your office. It’s real-time networking that counts.
In the words of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Homeric hero, Ulysses, back in 1842:
‘I am a part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch where thro’
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.’
But business travel is less poetic and a good deal less sentimental. Which is why John Harbinger makes fewer trips these days. This excursion with Jane is a fairly rare experience in real-time reality. Like most other road warriors, John embraces the new ‘travel avoidance’ technology, such as virtual conferencing and virtual meetings in real or ‘displaced’ time, with chiliastic zeal.
The technology is rooted in voice recognition software developed back in the late 90s that enabled you to call a computer from anywhere in the world, check your e-mail your voice-mail and faxes, either by computer or through the telephone. You could convert them from voice to text, or vice versa, and re-direct them by any medium.
Recent advances in artificial intelligence make it possible to hold an open-ended discussion through a computer. The machine not only understands the meaning of what you say but replies to you in a normal voice – which might be the digitalized voice of a real person.
John Millennium, along with his colleagues, has had his voice ‘digitalized’ and stored on-line. Early computer-generated voices sounded robotic because words were mechanically strung together into sentences, thereby losing the rhythm of the dialogue; whereas digitalized voices are produced by recording entire sentences, then shoehorning in numbers and letters of the alphabet.
Voices are recorded in three ways. If you say the number nine, for instance, at the beginning of a word, it sounds different from if you say it in the middle or the end. The same applies to words and phrases.
It’s hard to detect a digitalized voice in displaced time from a real voice in real time. Meetings can thus be conducted in real or displaced time. You program your responses, to say, a budget meeting, in advance and your digitalized voice conducts a dialogue on your behalf. Cognitive programs are being designed whereby John can participate vicariously at several meetings while he is away. It beats the old way of having answering machines talk to one another, or batting e-mails back and forth, communication lost in fruitless volleys of non sequiturs.
Back in their suite, the Harbingers are mentally packing their bags for an ‘out of this world’ space vacation. They have been armchair astronauts for years and are looking forward to five days in a Disney Space Resort 300 miles above Earth. They will take off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, in a NASA space shuttle adapted to carry 40 tourists, experiencing weightless for about 15 minutes.
The resort accommodates 300 people in cruise-ship luxury. It takes an hour and a half to make a complete orbit of the Earth, spinning like a roulette wheel at about one revolution a minute, thus developing artificial gravity.
You stay in an outer ring, where you experience about half of normal gravity – just about half your normal weight – so you can use bathroom facilities and such at practically normal conditions. A central column section has zero gravity. This is the entertainment and recreation center, which guests can visit for an hour or so at a time. There are windows in the central column to view the Earth.
There are lots of entertainment possibilities at zero gravity, including a gym with padded walls. Astronauts have found that blood that is normally drawn down to your legs is released and drifts upwards. You become thinner, your chest expands by two to three inches, your face fills out and wrinkles disappear.
While Jane muses about a second honeymoon in space, John is thinking about the final frontier in space travel – to experience Einstein’s paradox of relativity, that if you travel faster than the speed of light, you are younger when you get back than when you left. Daunting implications for a career in international business.
If you’re feeling under the weather on your next business trip, don’t blame it all on jet lag, travel fatigue, the recalcitrance of your sparring partners or a subliminal hangover. Put it down to the quality of the air you breathe. There’s junk air as well as junk food. You may be suffering from a deficiency of negative ions.
Ions are naturally occurring air molecules that carry a positive or negative charge. The outdoor air concentration varies with the weather, altitude, pollution, time of day and season, but normally consists of 1,000 negative ions and 1,200 positive ions per cubic centimeter. If the air is abnormally high in positive ions, or low in ions of another polarity – which is often the case in aircraft cabins, cars, trains and air-conditioned buildings – you may be prone to headaches, nausea and irritability. On the other hand, air which is rich in negative ions – such as you find in the mountains, besides flowing water and after a thunderstorm – can make you feel good. This is why a growing number of travelers are taking ionizers with them to charge the depleted in cars and hotel rooms with negative ions.
Weren’t ionizers discredited back in the 1950s when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration prohibited their sale for anything other than air-cleaning applications? They were indeed, and for good cause. The notion that ions could influence health and behavior lost credence as a result of dubious research reports and extravagant claims by manufacturers. But recent ion research in the United States, Israel and England is helping to make ionizers scientifically respectable.
At any rate, sales of ionizers are taking off. A British firm, Mountain Breeze, claims to be selling an average of 1,000 ionizers a week. Says marketing director Stephen Cross: ‘There’s a massive reawakening of interest in ionizers. You should see the testimonials we get; we’re doubling our sales every year. In the U.S. you still can’t say anything more than that they clean the air. There is empirical evidence that people feel better in an environment which is high in negative ions. We still don’t know why, but we’re still gradually building up the research base.’
An ionizer is nothing more than a high-voltage circuit which creates a high potential at the tip of a sharp needle, thereby discharging a stream of electrons which collide with air molecules to form negative ions. These then impart a negative charge to dust, pollen, water droplets and cigarette smoke suspended in the air which precipitate out to the nearest grounded surface, such as the floor and walls, by electrolytic action. You can easily test this by placing an ionizer on your desk in a smoke-filled room. The smoke rapidly clears and the ionizer is surrounded by a corona of dust which is easily swept up. If you put your hand close to an ionizer, you can actually feel the stream of electrons on the skin as a slight breeze. And it’s sometimes visible in the dark as a faint blue glow. One thing to check if you’re buying an ionizer is that it doesn’t emit ozone as a byproduct (which many early models did) as this is highly toxic in concentrations of more than a few parts per million.
Few people seriously dispute the air cleaning capacity of ionizers – they are routinely used in offices and some hospitals are installing them to help reduce cross-infection by airborne bacteria and viruses.
Studies carried out in the 1970s at the University of California and at the University of Jerusalem have demonstrated that high levels of positive ions cause the body to react as if it were under stress by stimulating the production of neuro-hormones, such as serotonin – which affects sleep and mood – and adrenalin, as well as histamine, which is associated with hay fever and other allergic reactions; whereas a preponderance of negative ions seems to contribute to a feeling of well-being.
The Jerusalem study examined the effects of the Sharav, a hot, dry wind in Israel which causes up to two thirds of the population to complain of headaches, respiratory discomfort and depression. The Sharav and similar winds, such as the Fohn in Switzerland, southern Germany and Austria and the Santa Ana in California, have a high positive ion content which may indeed cause behavioral and clinical symptoms. It has been reported that when the Fohn blows, hospitals postpone operations and the traffic accident rate soars. Joan Didion writes of the morbid effects of the Santa Ana when ‘every voice seems a scream. It is the season of suicide and divorce and prickly dread, wherever the wind blows.’ Raymond Chandler described the hot dry Santa Anas ‘that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch.’
More recently, work by Dr Leslie Hawkins, head of the Robens Institute at the University of Surrey in England, has demonstrated that in air-conditioned buildings, where the ion count is low, the incidence of headaches, nausea and lethargy – the ‘sick building syndrome’ – suffered by occupants is significantly reduced by installing an air ionizer.
Hawkins conducted extensive double-blind occupational studies to determine if positive or negative atmospheric ion levels could influence actual performance levels as well as attitudes among computer operators. He demonstrated that a majority reported feeling more comfortable and alert when the de-ionized environment in which they had been working was replenished with a natural level of negative ions. His studies also revealed that this replenished air increased work efficiency and productivity with a concurrent reduction in reported symptoms of nausea, stress, fatigue and dizziness.
If you fancy doing some research of your own, there’s a wide choice of ionizers on the market, including portable ones on the market, including portable ones for hotel rooms and car models that plug into lighter sockets.
Whether or not it makes you feel better, snorting the right sort of ions could be a great way to break the ice at your next meeting.
Roger Collis 1986 International Herald Tribune
[Another ‘blast from the past;’ an archive story from my forthcoming collection, ‘Management Man.’ www.rogercollis.co.uk]
‘You’ve checked in, and printed your boarding card with your seat assignment online; fantastic. You then need to check your bag with an agent; go through passport control; join the queue at security; then present the boarding card and an ID when you board the plane. Each of these processes is being done in self-service mode somewhere in the world. We are trying to corral these to deliver a program to speed the progress of passengers through the airport.’
This is how Paul Behan, program manager for fast travel, at the International Air Transport Association in Geneva, talks about his mission.
Baggage, for example: you first need to register that you intend to check one, two or more bags, either on the Web or a self-service kiosk at the airport. Then you ‘self-tag’ your bags.
‘That’s what is happening in Scandinavia, Germany and Canada; getting the bag to the point ready to go,’ Behan says. ‘You still need an agent for airline liability and security sides, but you can cut the process to about 20 seconds as opposed to the couple of minutes it takes now. However, some pilots are going on in Europe, such as Schiphol, for a totally unmanned baggage drop facility.’
If your bags don’t make it to the other end, instead of standing in line for an agent, you will fill in the data at a kiosk, or an Internet work station, in the baggage hall, print a receipt, and leave without seeing anyone.
The next stage to printing out the boarding card at home will be to check in with your cell phone, or use it as a postbox for a Web check-in. Check in the night before and send it to your mobile. According to Behan, ten airlines enable mobile phone check-in with IATA bar-coded boarding passes.
Cell phones can lessen the misery of hanging around the airport waiting for a delayed flight.
Imagine a snow storm over Chicago with a hundreds of delayed or canceled flights; standing in line at the desk for an agent to help you.
‘We’re looking at mobile technology to send a message to the passenger saying, don’t turn up at the airport at two o’clock but at four; and by the way, here’s your new boarding pass. This is a reality today,’ Behan says. ‘You’ll also be able to use your mobile device as a boarding pass; saves you having to print a bit of paper.’
‘The next step is boarding the plane. In Japan, Scandinavia and Germany, they’re implementing self-boarding gates,’ Behan adds. ‘Think of your metro station. You’ll present your boarding pass either as a piece of paper or mobile with a bar code. There are some challenges with passport checks at the gate; but we are working on that.’
Baggage is the number one reason why travelers do not use self-service options, according to a survey by SITA, a Geneva-based airline communications provider, conducted at six of the world’s busiest airports.
SITA Air Transport World Passenger Self-Service Survey examined the attitudes and habits of a representative sample of the 232 million passengers who use seven international airports: Hartsfield-Jackson, Atlanta; Mumbai International; Charles-de-Gaulle, Paris; Moscow Domodedovo; Sao Paulo Guarulhos and Johannesburg. Interviews with 2,143 travelers representing more than 60 nationalities flying on more than 100 airlines were made at the departure gates during April and May 2008.
The survey confirms that self-service is part of full-service expectations; and airlines are responding with technology giving travelers greater convenience, with power to control their airport experience. Only price (70.5 percent) and flight schedule (63.1 percent) rank above ‘ability to make your own arrangements on the Web’ (42.5 percent).
Overall, 57.6 percent of respondents booked their flight on line, while 36 percent checked in on the Web or at a self-service kiosk. ‘Ease of use’ (72 percent) and ‘time saved’ (60 percent) were the most popular reasons for online booking - plus the fact that the Web makes comparison of the various options easier (56 percent).
‘Baggage is the reason stated by almost half (48.4 percent) of people as the reason for not using self-service check ins when it is available,’ says Dominique El Bez, SITA director, portfolio marketing, ‘seriously detracting from the passenger experience, and limiting the savings and efficiencies made possible by self-service technology. Addressing the baggage dilemma is a key milestone towards achieving our target of 80 percent self-service check-in.’
According to the survey, 47.8 percent of travelers would be willing to use both remote check-in and bag-drop services in the future, and 42.2 percent of them would be willing to pay for them.
A majority of respondents (66.7 percent) would welcome more online functions such as the ability to modify reservations. The ability to use kiosks for flight transfers would be welcomed by 53.8 percent, and for reporting lost baggage claims by 41.8 percent.
The number of travelers willing to use airline Web sites to frequently book other travel components, such as hotels and car rental, is expected to ‘almost double in the coming years’ from the present 11.2 percent.
‘Automated border control and security processing’ would be acceptable to 48.7 percent, while a ‘weighted average’ of 40 percent of travelers would accept the idea of airlines or airports using ‘location sensing technology to guide them through the terminal.’
This is ‘Big Brother’ territory. Radio Frequency Identification Tags linked with a network of high resolution CCTV panoramic cameras around an airport can track the location of any passenger with an accuracy of one square meter, enabling authorities to keep an eye on suspicious individuals, find lost children, ensure that passengers arrive at the gate in time to board their planes, and help evacuate airports in an emergency.
RFID chips work by emitting a short radio message when interrogated by an electronic tag reader. Passengers might be given a wrist band or a boarding pass embedded with a unique ID, cross-referenced to information on the reservations system, such as name and flight number.
The highest acceptance of the idea among respondents was in Sao Paulo (69 percent); the lowest in Paris Charles-de-Gaulle (four percent).
Two-thirds of business travelers have eavesdropped on someone else’s confidential conversations; over a third have caught sight of sensitive documents or information on laptops — and over ten percent admit that they have been used this information for their own business purposes, according to a survey of 1,000 frequent travelers in the United States and the UK.
The survey, commissioned by the Regus Group, a provider of serviced offices and business lounges for travelers around the world, is an ominous reminder of World War 2 posters — ‘Walls Have Ears: Careless Talk Costs Lives!’
In these intrusive times, we are involuntary eavesdroppers on fellow travelers ranting on cell-phones; and who can resist an inquisitive glance at someone’s open briefcase or laptop screen?
(’A guy in the next row was saying that Tom is leaving the company!’ ‘Wow, I wonder if Tom knows.’)
The survey found that 67 percent of British travelers have eavesdropped on someone else business conversation, versus 59 percent of Americans — and 35 percent of British (34 percent of Americans) have caught sight of sensitive company documents; 13 percent of British (19 percent of Americans) have been able to use the information they have overheard in public.
More traveling women (71 percent) listen to conversations than men (67 percent); but more men (39 percent) pry at private documents than women (29 percent).
David Porter, head of security and risk at Detica, specialist business consultants (www.detica.com), said, ‘The survey points to significant vulnerability in corporate security. I’ve overheard sensitive conversations in trains, bars, and restaurants — whether lawyers discussing client details or salespeople revealing key contacts. People seem to slip into a very casual security mindset when using laptops and PDAs. They naively think other people will not be interested or aware of what they are doing; in reality this could not be further from the truth.’
Kurt Mroncz, vice president, global sales at Regus,’ said, ‘Many companies don’t realize the staggering problems people face on the road, and the lengths they go to find a place to work or to have a private conversation. The survey shows that half of business travelers resort resorted to working in washrooms, bars and crowded restaurants, even park benches.’
Regus’ Business World program offers members access to over 950 business lounges around the world, to work in comfort and privacy. Gold membership (#199 a year) allows one to drop in to any lounge, connect your laptop to the Internet and take or make calls.
Security specialist Will Geddes, managing director of ICP Group (www.icpgroup.ltd.uk), offers the following security tips:
-Always have a password and pin number on your phone, so that it will automatically stop after a few minutes of non use; ‘absolutely critical, otherwise it’s like leaving your address book open, with all your passwords and phone numbers.’
-Avoid discussing confidential matters over the phone in a public place — and use code-names for projects and people.
-Make sure that your memory stick is password protected as well. You can now get biometric memory sticks with thumb print protection.
-Make sure the screen saver on your laptop goes into lock mode after 5 to 10 minutes, requiring you to enter the password for it to work again.
-Always delete text messages or e-mails on your phone or Blackberry, or get software to forward them to your e-mail back at the office. ‘There’s a lot of private information there; transfer it on.’
-Don’t take unnecessary things in your briefcase; only the stuff you really need for that trip; leave all personal things out. And keep documents in covered, unlabeled folders.
-Traveling without a laptop, you can access your office files by logging on to a service such as GoToMyPC (www.gotomypc.com) from any Internet-connected device — even a dumb terminal in a hotel lobby — and pick up work where you left off. The connection is secure, and it feels as though you are sitting in front of your own PC. But you must keep your home computer on, at least in ’sleep mode,’ while you are away.
‘I go into a VPN — virtual private network — to my office server remotely,’ Geddes says. ‘A lot of people in the financial services sector do this. It means I’m not holding anything locally, which is a potential risk, if I lose or break the laptop.’
-Consider having a separate laptop (and memory stick) that you use only for trips; and save documents on a memory stick rather than on the hard-drive.
-Don’t put your laptop or documents in the overhead bin above you, but one diagonal to you, so that when someone rummages in the locker, you can see what he or she is doing. People have had laptops stolen from overhead in business-class cabins.
Safeguarding private data from Big Brother is rather more daunting. Our telephone conversations and e-mails are routinely ’swept’ for certain key words or phrases, which may activate a closer surveillance. Reports that the U.S. government has plans to make random border searches of laptops, cell phones, PDAs and Blackberrys and copy or seize data has sent a chill through businesses and civil rights groups. Whether password protection could prevail is a moot point.
Air travelers not only embrace new technology, but are keen for more high-tech travel options and are demanding ‘opportunities to take more control of their travel experience,’ according to the International Air Transport Association’s new annual Corporate Air Travel Survey of over 10,000 active travelers, published last month.
The survey shows that 89 percent of respondents prefer ‘e-tickets’ to paper tickets; 56 percent have used Internet check-in; and 69 percent have used self-service kiosks at airports, instead of check-in desks. When asked if they wanted more self-service options, 54 percent said, yes - ‘with positive results from all the regions.’
Respondents ranked the ’self-service features they plan to use most often in future:’ Online booking (75 percent); online reservation changes (69 percent); online check-in (61 percent); E-mail notification service (60 percent); printing boarding pass at home (58 percent); ‘common use’ self-service check-in kiosks (53 percent); re-routing of missed or canceled flights (41 percent); ‘remote baggage drop-off service’ (33 percent); ‘post-arrival assistance (28 percent.
Respondents also called for additional self-service options online, and at the departure gate. Online: the ability to select, or change, seats (82 percent); change reservations (55 percent); update their frequent flier information (49 percent); purchase or request upgrades (45 percent). At the departure gate: the ability to obtain last minute upgrades (62 percent); last minute changes to seating (46 percent); obtaining transfer information (27 percent); adding frequent flier information (21 percent); and the ability to check in additional baggage (19 percent).
Giovanni Bisignani, IATA director general and CEO, said, ‘The consumer has spoken and the message is clear. Self-service is part of full-service expectations; airlines are responding with technology that gives travelers greater convenience with options to control their travel experience. The self-service revolution is underway. Consumers demand the empowerment of technology, and the efficiencies it creates are critical for airlines that need to reduce costs.’
Well, yes, although a cynic might say that travelers do not have much choice. Most airlines now charge a premium unless you book and check-in on-line. Printing your own boarding card is useful, but not everyone welcomes the disappearance of paper tickets; okay, they are liable to loss or theft, but they allow more flexibility if you want to switch to another airline en route (more difficult with an e-ticket), chasing refunds or frequent flier miles and more reassuring on multi-sector flights with several airlines, because carriers have different reservations systems, and you do not always have to set exact dates for travel. Try arguing with a blank computer screen in Mogadishu with a fugitive electronic reservation and when you’ve lost the bit of paper you wrote it on anyway.
IATA reports that ‘global penetration’ of electronic tickets is 88 percent, issuing a ‘last call’ for paper tickets in its drive for 100 percent e-ticketing by June 1 2008. Over 90 airlines are now using bar-coded boarding passes that you can print out yourself; common-use self-service kiosks are operating at 80 airports; and RFID (radio frequency identification) tags, that help to solve the problems of mishandled, and lost baggage, are employed at four airports.
Zagat’s 2007 Global Airline Survey, published last month, confirms travelers’ deep discontent with the airline industry and especially U.S. carriers.
The survey, the first since 2005, questioned 7,498 frequent fliers who rated 84 airlines and 46 major airports. Discontent is so high that 61 percent of respondents favored the enactment of the ‘Airline Passengers Bill of Rights,’ which would ensure that passengers be compensated for ‘bad air travel experiences.’
Overall, Midwest Airlines was voted number one for U.S. domestic economy service, followed by Virgin America, JetBlue Airlines, Frontier Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. Top for premium service was Virgin America, followed by Continental Airlines, Hawaiian, Alaska Airlines, and Air Tran Airways.
Singapore Airlines retains its No. 1 rating among international carriers for both economy and premium service, followed, for economy service, by Emirates, Thai Airways, All Nippon Airways, and Air New Zealand; and, for premium service, by Virgin Atlantic, Emirates and All Nippon Airways.
Singapore was first again for ‘overall quality,’ followed by Emirates, Thai Airways, All Nippon, and Air New Zealand.
Continental and Southwest Airlines were the only major U.S. carriers not to have their overall ratings drop since 2005.
Among airports, Tampa International and Hong Kong rate among the best, and New York’s La Guardia and JFK among the worst in most categories, except security.
Predictably, 60 percent of respondents said they are using airline Web sites to book their flights. Another 15 percent use a travel site, such as Expedia and Travelocity. The top airline Web sites are those of Southwest, JetBlue and Continental Airlines.
Full results of the survey are at www.zagat.com/airline.
The new Yotel Heathrow ‘capsule hotel’, which opened on Dec. 6, inside terminal four, promises to be a refuge for travelers who want a cheap and cheerful place to lay their head for a few hours at any time of the day or night. Ideal if you have an early flight, or you have a heft wait in transit or time to kill before a meeting.
As I reported, back in June, when the first Yotel opened at Gatwick Airport, ‘cabins’ come with all the facilities you would expect from a comfortable hotel room. Both the ‘premium’ and ’standard’ cabins come with en suite bathrooms, and 24-hour room service. Each cabins is equipped with a desk, free Wi Fi, wired Internet access, and ‘techno-wall’ entertainment system.
Prices for a standard cabin range from #25 fir four hours and around #56 overnight, while a premium cabin costs #40 for four hours, and around #82 overnight. Cabins can be booked on line at www.yotel.com
Like most frequent travelers in Europe and the rest of the world, I’ve been sucked into believing that this brave new world of ticketless electronic travel would be the best thing for travelers since putting wheels and handles on luggage. Certainly easier than the process of showing my passport from one country to the next. The world of ticketless seemed to promise an easier time traveling. Yea, right. Now that I’ve joined the masses and have been exposed to this phenomenon, I’m here to say that ticketless travel might save a few trees (and yes, I’m all for that), but it doesn’t do much for making travel easier.
Case in point. In times past, I’d get my ticket and boarding pass from my travel agent and on short trips, head directly for the gate and when they called priority boarding, I would jostle with a few others and be in my seat with little fuss and no muss. My only concern might be a flight delay. Now enter this wonderful thing called ticketless electronic travel. You don’t have to worry about losing your ticket, etc. Big deal. In nine years of flying hundreds of trips to every conceivable place I could talk to people about miles and points, I never came close to losing my ticket. So, here I go. Yes, I’m just taking carry-on luggage, but to the end of a long line I go to “check-in” for my flight, having to pull out my photo ID and passport which is in my wallet alongside my elite level frequent flyer card. Ten minutes later, I’ve got my “fine print” and instructions to go to the gate to get my boarding pass. Now, here’s the dilemma. If I leisurely visit any of the merchants in the main terminal (no time for duty free), I’m risking that higher number for boarding purposes. No shopping today, got to get to the gate. Once at the gate, there’s a real long line to get my boarding pass. 15 minutes later I become passenger 107. At this point they have no idea if I’ve paid full fare or discount, flew them 100 times or only once, I’m just passenger 107. My profile with the elite level frequent flyer program I have in my wallet knows I like aisle forward and even has an area of the plane I can sit with others who exhibit a great loyalty to that one airline. Anyway, in waves of ten passengers at a time, we board. Those of us who aren’t in the habit of being at the airport 2 hours prior to flight (this is only a one hour and fifteen minute flight) know what’s ahead of us. I find solitude in seat B in row 22. As I settle down for my flight, I can’t help but wonder if there is anyone else out there like me less interested in worrying about losing my ticket, but more interested in standing in less lines and making my airline experience a little less challenging. But just as the pilot reminds me to buckle up for safety and one of my seatmates decides to grab a sandwich out of his backpack, I repeat to myself so that no one can hear… I hate ticketless travel.
When frequent flyer programs were initially introduced in the U.S. in May of 1981, individuals took only as long as June (yes, the very next month) to figure out how they might take advantage of the programs. Now that frequent flyer schemes are popular around the world, so are the ways that frequent flyers try to take advantage of them and not always on the right side of business. The allure of first class upgrades, free tickets and additional inflight pampering has lead a growing number of frequent flyers to become obsessed with frequent flyer schemes. This obsession seems innocent at first as frequent travelers queue in line to use their charm to acquire an upgrade or perhaps a change in a ticket which normally would not be allowed. Once that charm doesn’t produce the results it used to, travelers sometimes turn to intimidation to acquire the best benefits of travel. Upon failing, or for the sheer power of greed, a few even turn to deception.
Among the areas of fraud which are prevalent today are the following: other identity miles, double dipping, refunds, selling miles, and building miles.
Other Identity Miles
This deception is not currently a major problem in Europe as travelers are subject in the past to flight checks that prevent some of the common fraud from taking place. For instance, one of the many ways that frequent flyers build additional miles is to have others fly under their name, thus creating a consistent level of flight credits to earn that next free award. With the many passport checks that often occur in Europe, that problem is of minor concern to most of the European carriers we’ve talked to. All that is sure to change as the Schengen convention steers the way for free movement of European nationals within the EU. Without passport checks, there just might be a boom in “other identity” travel. This type of deception is often hard to detect, but as so often happens, the frequent flyer gets greedy and has several people flying under their identity. Sooner or later two people will be flying the same date and a red flag will alert those in charge of passenger security. How often does this happen? In the U.S., it’s often assumed that at least 10% of the most frequent flyers have at one time or another enlisted someone else to help them earn miles. While hardly in the same category as the Barings fiasco, it does indicate that these program influence behavior, and not always the behaviour to simply fly one airline.
Last year, Unisys, the international computer company, introduced a conceptual database program for the airlines which among several marketing enhancements, offered the ability to feature a photo of the frequent flyer in his/her profile. Designed primarily to boost customer service in a friendly sort of way, it would go a long way toward thwarting fraud among frequent flyers.
Double Dipping
Other areas of fraud that have become common is the practice of double dipping your flight credits. Since many of the European airlines participate in other frequent flyer schemes, is isn’t unusual for a member to submit flight credit to several programs at one time, hoping to build a free award several times at once. The sophistication of databases these days prevents some of this activity, but when a member has addresses both at work and at home, it makes the ability to connect the frequent flyer a bit harder to do. This is especially popular for those submitting credit to both a U.S.-based programme and a European-based programme.
Refunds
Another example of what people are willing to do to earn miles (but maybe not even fly) is to purchase full fare tickets, check-in to travel and then simply not board the airplane. At this time, they will take the ticket with boarding pass back to the airline for a refund. For some airlines, this is hard to detect and often the database will award miles to the person because he/she actually checked-in. A case involving this fraud landed a U.S. citizen in prison. When he was finally discovered, he had several hundred tickets in his briefcase which had earned him well over one million miles.
Selling Miles
The more common issue of fraud involving frequent flyers is the area of coupon brokering. While the U.K. has a large number of “bucket shops” that can produce a dazzling array of cheap airfares, coupon brokers have existed for several years in London and other parts of the globe. In this case, they are people who specialize in finding a frequent flyer who has too many miles or not enough time to enjoy them and matching them up with a traveler who is seeking a discount air ticket. The coupon broker purchases an award from the frequent flyer, marks it up a bit and then resells it to the traveler looking for the discount. When all is said and done, the traveler still saves an average of 40-70% off the regular price of the ticket. How prevalent is this. Two years ago the British Airways/USAir alliance discontinued the Concorde award for USAir members because audits showed that upwards of 40% of the free awards on that flight were being channeled through coupon brokers, something not in the best interest of the frequent flyer nor of the airlines themselves. At one time, this underground broker activity was estimated to be an annual turnover in excess of #175 million. But during the last five years, several factors have caused this practice to subside. First, airline schemes have gotten better at detecting this type of fraud. The next time you give a free award to a friend to use, that person will often find themselves questioned at the check-in counter and have to produce identification when traveling. Often, a person purchasing an award from someone else through a coupon broker will not know the name of the person whom they got the airline ticket from. As a result, a quick question at the check-in counter will catch an unsuspecting traveler that they are suing an airline ticket that was obtained through defrauding the airline. Many coupon brokers have since discontinued their business because of the growing ability of the airlines to press criminal charges against their actions.
Building Miles
Several enterprising people have gained access to various frequent flyer program databases to create and build frequent flyer accounts for personal gain. In 1990, a Lufthansa baggage attendant devised a way to enter the United Airlines Mileage Plus database and create false accounts, then steer miles into those accounts and then issue awards from those accounts which he then proceeded to sell for money. So far, the databases of at least three major airlines have been accessed in this way. Those that were caught are now serving time in prison. Airlines have since created additional security measures to ensure that their own employees (and several have been caught assisting flyers with false awards) and others cannot use information in their access to commit frequent flyer fraud.
There are several other ways in which people have learned they can earn miles, including making multiple reservations and hope to earn miles when using a free award and actually scavenging at airports for discarded tickets that when doctored up, are submitted for “missing” credit. The lengths to which people have gone to earn miles and free awards is rather frightening. But then again, so is the success of frequent flyer schemes. In the fourteen short years these schemes have been in existence, over 32 million people worldwide have signed up for at least one programme. On an annual basis, over 10 million free award tickets were distributed by airlines in 1994 alone. With the lure of free travel worldwide, it is no wonder that some have turned to fraud to earn these tickets. But interestingly enough, not all have devised ways to defraud the airline for free airline tickets. Most of those who have been caught, do it either for financial gain, or simply for the thrill of it.
As frequent flyer schemes develop new technology designed to provide additional customer service benefits to their members, they in turn are actually bringing in the technology that will make many of the current ways to defraud an airline almost impossible to achieve. But as can be expected, as long as there is a mile, there will be someone trying to either get it for free or make money off of it.