Tag Archives: air travel

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Relationships Still Matter

I have been a member of the American Airlines Admirals Club for a number of years. Clubs are available at a number of major city airports and provide an oasis of quiet and comfort while I travel. They are also great places to get some work done while I wait for my next flight.

The Admirals Club at the Nashville, Tenn. airport was closed soon after the September 11 terrorist attack. Fortunately, that club reopened late last year. At a small airport like Nashville, it’s very easy to get to know and have a relationship with the staff. It feels good to walk into the club and be greeted by name and asked how my family is.

Last week, my oldest daughter, Kelly, was connecting through Nashville on her way to Portland, Ore. She had a two-hour layover and I suggested to my wife Karen that she meet Kelly at the airport. I planned to contact my friends at the Admirals Club to see if they could provide Karen with a pass to get through security so she could meet Kelly at her gate.

When I called the number for the Nashville Club, I was directed to the American Airlines general Admirals Club helpline. It took two calls back to figure out how to navigate through the menu to get to a live person. Once I finally got through to an agent and explained that I wanted to talk to someone at the Nashville Club, I was nicely but firmly told that that was no longer possible.

Apparently, American Airlines has changed their policy to prevent Club members from contacting anyone directly in any of their Admirals Club locations. I was also kindly informed my wife would not be able to get a security pass.

I am disappointed in this policy change. You see, relationships still matter. The employees at the Nashville Club take care of me. They are the face of American Airlines. They do a lot to smooth over the natural frustrations that are involved with traveling.

I understand American’s need to control access to local Club personnel so they are able to service the members at the Club. I also suspect there are some people who, when given access, abuse it. I, however, am not one of those people. I now feel a little more disconnected from American Airlines. It appears that efficiencies are more important to them than relationships.

That experience got me thinking. What technologies, policies, and procedures have you put in place in your organization that you hoped would increase efficiencies but have instead resulted in barriers to relationships?

Efficiencies are important. But you need to balance increased efficiency and effectiveness with the ability to establish and build relationships with your key prospects and clients.

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Broadband in the Sky

American Airlines has announced the launch of a new mobile broadband service, Gogo,™ provided by Aircell. Customers traveling on American’s Boeing 767-200 aircraft can access complete coast-to-coast coverage on nonstop flights between New York and San Francisco, New York and Los Angeles, and New York and Miami.

Aircell’s Gogo service will be available to customers as a fee-based service in all cabins. Aircell will charge $12.95 on flights that are longer than three hours, which include American’s Boeing 767-200 flights. Each paid Gogo session includes full Internet access. Cell phone and Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) services are not available. Gogo turns an American Airlines flight into a Wi-Fi hotspot. Once the aircraft has reached 10,000 feet, users can simply turn on their Wi-Fi enabled devices such as laptops, smartphones, and PDAs, open their browsers and be directed to the Gogo portal page where they can sign up and begin surfing. Gogo is powered by the Aircell air-to-ground (ATG) Broadband System, which runs over Aircell’s exclusive nationwide network.

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Make Cell Calls on Airplanes

Israeli company Aerophone Ltd. has developed a communication system that enables telephone calls to be made from airplanes—independent of GSM/CDMA ground stations. The system supports all wavebands and requires neither prior written registration of the passengers nor a particular billing system. Calls cost $1.60 per minute and are invoiced via the normal mobile telephone bill.

The development has been made possible by the installation of so-called picocells (miniature GSM stations) in airplanes, as well as by servers and transceivers that link to telecommunication satellites and receiving stations for the Ku band (Kurtz-under band: a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum in the microwave range of frequencies). The picocells in the immediate vicinity of passengers automatically reduce the energy output of logged-in mobile telephones to a minimum so they don’t have negative effects on the aircraft electronic systems.

Installation and operation of the Aerophone system is free of charge for the airlines. While I applaud the continued development of technology, as a frequent flyer, I am not thrilled with the idea of listening to phone conversations while trapped on a plane.

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Paperless Boarding Pass

Paperless boarding schemes aren’t exactly revolutionary, but they’re still far from common at US airports. Now, however, Continental Airlines has announced that it will be experimenting with a cell phone-based boarding pass setup at Houston’s Intercontinental Airport. This will enable single passengers (as in one bar code per person, per device) to show security personnel a jumbled mixture of blocks alongside their ID in order to board the plane. The three-month trial program will allow people to receive a paper pass should their mobile/PDA run out of juice before boarding time approaches. While hard plans for future use aren’t yet laid out, the process could spread to other airlines and airports if things go smoothly.

Here’s how the system works. The two-dimensional bar code, a jumble of squares and rectangles, stores the passenger’s name and flight information. A TSA screener confirms the bar code’s authenticity with a handheld scanner. Passengers still need to show photo identification. The electronic boarding pass also works at airport gates.

The system has some limits. For instance, only passengers traveling alone can use the electronic pass. Continental is trying to upgrade the technology so that it can accommodate multiple passengers traveling together. Continental will be the first airline in the United States to try this system, but Air Canada has been offering paperless boarding since September.