Airline Rebound Depends on Service-Expert

Will business travelers frightened away from air travel by the threat of terrorism and the economic slowdown gradually return to the skies as time passes and fears ease?

The airlines better not wait to find out, according to one expert, who believes the battle is being fought -- and not well -- right now.

The biggest thing air carriers can do now is to work with existing customers, many of whom are just testing the waters, to give them a travel experience that is as positive as possible under the circumstances, according to Stephen Brown, director of the Center for Services Leadership at Arizona State University.


Among other things he believes the airlines may be damaging themselves by massive layoffs at a time when they need to invest in front-line people power to win back customers facing new security and other travel hurdles.

http://money.iwon.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt...as/money/cm/nw


16 Reasons to Fly Again

http://www.fortune.com/indext.jhtml?...&doc_id=204726

One week after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Angela K. Selden did the previously unthinkable: she took a flight with a layover in Denver.
Ms. Selden heads a business unit of the management consulting firm Accenture and flies well over 100,000 miles each year. And one of her cardinal rules of avoiding travel problems is that she flies direct. But with the uncomfortable knowledge that the Sept. 11 hijackers chose cross-country planes fully loaded with fuel, she decided to trade convenience for what she thought might be a lower level of risk.

Ms. Selden's decision is a small example of how the peripatetic tribe of those who frequently travel on business has dealt with changes wrought by the attacks...

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/22/business/22ROAD.html



[This message has been edited by doc (edited 10-22-2001).]