I know the airline indusrty as a whole in the US is a bit slow in adopting some of the already current technologies that are out there to make the traveler experience more efficient but when are we going to see Text messaging?
Yeah, it's great having an email regarding my filght delay or cancellation sent to my PC but what good does that do me if I am in route to the airport or worse, already sitting at the airport!?

I am sure all of us passengers would like to have alerts sent to our cell phones via a text message.
And how about a little dialouge? I would like to be able to Text an airline and have a response to my question. Maybe some basic flight info? That would be super helpful. I rather text than to sit through that dizzing experience over the phone, listenting to those voice prompts...

If your mobile phone accepts emails, you can have the text delivered to your
cell phone.

I do not believe they use SMS yet.

Dunno bout anyone else but I get trip alert phone calls on my cell.... <shrug>

Same here.

This is the one area where I miss UA.

I came over to CO earlier this year and am happy in every regard, except UA does a better job of letting me know what's up with text messages than CO does. I get gate arrival and departure info (so that on a connection while taxiing in I know what gate we're arriving at and where the connection will leave from) and info about schedule changes and problems.

With Continental, it's all a matter of how you set your alert preferences. I have mine set for both e-mail (which I'll see on my Blackberry as well as my PC) and text via cellphone. Redundant, but the option is there. I also find that for quick flight status queries and other things like that, the PDA-friendly website for CO allows me to get that information pretty easily.

They can barely respond to emails in a timely fashion - I can't imagine that SMS messages would be any better. Not to mention the potential issues with trying to decipher a ? that is only 160 characters long and replying in the same amount of space. Maybe it could work for basic stuff like flight status, but nothing more complicated, I think.

And I don't bother with text messages, so not everyone would benefit from it, though as noted above many folks do receive their alerts that way.

yeah, i receive tripalerts as well. CO communicates quite a bit of information.
but i think if/when they get text messaging it will benefit those travelers who are always on the go (like me).

They seem to have a knack for sending me four trip alerts on my cell phone within two hours while I'm in Lima to let me know that my flight is right on time (@$3.00 per call).

On a Friday afternoon, when the planes are circling EWR like flies the trip alert function mysteriously ceases to function.

From Continental.com:

I'm on ATT (Cingular) and use [email protected]

This works not just for flight alert but can be used to send email to most cell phones from any email program.

I guess that's the point.
If one is to use Text Messaging I dont want to have to enter in [email protected] (I thought i explained this earlier).

You only have to enter it once in your preferences, what's the big deal?

You beat me to the question! I don't understand what the big deal is.

as peejayemm, mentioned it would be nice to receive real time information on connections.

It's not a big deal.
Im just lazy. and accustomed to just entering in a phone number.

Does anyone get multiple messages, usually 4 or 5, for each CO trip alert? They break each line into single messages.

I've had this problem for a couple of years. Maybe it's my network (AT&T) or phone (Razr) or is anyone else having this problem?

On a delay-filled evening I can end up with 20-30 messages just from CO!