Reporting to Work Mid-Flight
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Business travelers will soon take advantage of airborne internet if two companies have their way. Boeing and software maker iPass plan to use satellite and Wi-Fi to connect high fliers to the office.
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Not quite the usual conference call.
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About 600 furloughed Northwest Airlines flight attendants could get their jobs back soon. The Professional Flight Attendants Association says the airline sill recall the flight attendants to fill vacancies in the Twin Cities and Detroit.
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At the airport check-in of tomorrow, "getting through security" should take 30 seconds.
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Blog: Computer failure blamed for temporary grounding of flights
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Travel: Today's business passengers want top-flight meals. Jay Rayner goes in search of the best in first-class food - and sees a few disconcertingly familiar faces.
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Between flight delays, missed connections and crowded flights, a business traveler has to have the resourcefulness of a person ready for stealthy ground combat.
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(InfoWorld) - The North American sales arm of Singapore Airlines Ltd. is halfway through a project to use on-demand software from Salesforce.com Inc. to improve collaboration between its home-based corporate travel staff. Following the lead of some of its peers in the industry, Singapore Airlines is requiring corporate business travel sales staff to work out of their homes to pare down infrastructure costs. The sales staff is spread out in cities including Boston, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Philadelphia and San Diego. The issue the airline and other companies are grappling with is how best to foster collaboration between such geographically scattered staff while also increasing efficiency and driving more sales. Prior to initial deployment of Salesforce.com's hosted sales automation and marketing software in April, the sales staff relied on e-mail and offline meetings as its main method for communication and collaboration, according to Michael Stellwag, manager of direct sales and marketing for the Americas at Singapore Airlines. About 18 months ago, the airline decided a sales force automation tool could help bring its home-based sales staff into closer collaboration with each other. Singapore Airlines took an in-depth look at products from three vendors over the course of six months -- Sage Software Inc.'s Act contact management software, enterprise applications vendor Saratoga Systems' CRM (customer relationship management) product, and Salesforce.com's hosted sales force automation and marketing offerings. The airline particularly liked Salesforce.com's on-demand approach since the application could run without support from Singapore Airlines' IT staff. The airline closed a deal to use Salesforce software as the software vendor's fiscal year ended on Jan. 31, 2006. From late 2005 through early 2006, Salesforce.com experienced a series of much publicized service outages. "We didn't place too much emphasis [on the failures]," Stellwag said. "Companies like Salesforce.com live and die by availability and we were confident the problem would be fixed. It didn't seem like anything more than a blip on the radar screen." Once the application was up and running, Stellwag began to check out Salesforce.com's AppExchange Web site where the vendor showcases both its own on-demand add-ons and applications developed by third parties to be used with the Salesforce software. "I looked at the broad array of applications and got hooked," he said. Of particular interest have been applications that address the specific needs of the airline industry, according to Stellwag. So far, Singapore Airlines is using 14 AppExchange applications including user adoption dashboards that measure how frequently the sales staff use the software. He also highlighted an application that integrates the Hoover's company database, an important source of sales leads for the airline's staff, with the Salesforce software. Looking ahead, Singapore Airlines wants to find ways to help sales team members be more efficient in how they set up trips to meet customers by doing mash-ups between Salesforce and mapping software from Mapquest Inc. and Google Inc. So far, about a dozen home-based salespeople are using the Salesforce software, with several more individuals to go live shortly. "Longer term, the number of home-based sales team members could jump considerably," Stellwag said. The sales staff particularly like the hosted software's offline module which enables them to access the basic functionality of Salesforce without needing an Internet connection. "People are communicating more than ever before," Stellwag said. "Everyone can see everyone else's details to facilitate greater cooperation and communication and for everyone to see how everyone else is doing." That ability to view colleague's sales progress acts as a self motivator for staff to ensure their efforts are at the level they should be, he added. Sharing calendars and task lists is proving extremely helpful in enabling the airline to put together an account team focused on a particular company, despite the sales team being based in different locations. Soon, the airline will roll out IBM Corp.'s Lotus Notes groupware to its sales operation in the U.S. and Canada, which had previously been using Microsoft Corp.'s Outlook Express. Stellwag is looking forward to the integration of Notes with Salesforce to enable further collaboration. "Salesforce has been successful at increasing productivity and has had a significant impact on our sales success," Stellwag said. "This is an experiment being watched very closely by executives in our worldwide headquarters in Singapore." When the project ends in about a year's time, if it has continued to meet a number of preset key performance indicators, the door could be open for a wider deployment of the hosted software. Â
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JACKSONVILLE, FL -- Everywhere you look and everywhere you go these days, people are using cell phones. Right now, air travelers can only use their cells phones before their flights take off, but that could soon change.
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Plus: Heathrow airport using 'see through clothes' scanner on passengers.
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Communicating can be tricky when a company or a government agency has workers in different locations and even different time zones.
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Six tips for easing re-entry after a vacation.
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U.S. holiday travelers hoping to get  back in the air after a weekend of flight cancellations due to  computer malfunctions and staff shortages still faced  difficulties getting to their destinations on Monday.
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How to keep that paid-for ride going.
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The Boise Airport is bracing for the two busiest travel days of the year on Wednesday and Sunday. Travelers are advised to arrive at least two hours before their departure time.
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By Suzanne Marta, The Dallas Morning News  Feb. 16--Booking a free frequent-flier ticket on American Airlines Inc. is getting easier.
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This pilot fish does part-time consulting in his spare time, and one of his clients is a close relative who needs a way to check his e-mail and investments while he's on vacation. Simple enough, right?