cblaid writes:
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">...for those who travel the kind of horrid schedule that you describe, Punki, that business will have to be done a new way. Given the FAA rules, we simply no longer can do business as usual, and clients et al will have to adapt to what they expect of business travelers, and business travelers are more and more going to simply have to re-think in every aspect how their business gets done -- including prior flight habits that just don't work anymore.</font>
First of all I do not consider my schedule '
horrible. I absolutely love to fly, I love to go new places, stay in hotels, eat in restaurants and meet lots of new people. I was beginning to have withdrawal symptoms that first week when I was unable to fly.
I do sincerely hope and pray that you are wrong in thinking that we will not continue to do "business as usual". For one thing our economy, especially here in Seattle, is heavily dependent on people continuing to travel more and more.
Secondly, we would lose so much richness of understanding of one another if our business communications were limited to electronics and paper. This weekend for instance I attended a very intense 2 day meeting in D.C. interacting very closely with about 60 people from all around the country who work in my industry. We not only exchanged information during our working sessions, but ate and drank together and really became closer friends.
Another example is the extraordinary success of Flyer Talk get togethers. Over the past three years I have developed many friendships that would not have developed if we hadn't met face to face.
While this is a rough patch for us right now, I still have hope for true world peace even in my lifetime.