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62 comments on Business air travel

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louGrinzo on October 25, 2005 - 12:00pm Permalink | Subthread | Comments top
I think air travel, particularly for business, is a perfect example of the kind of cultural change many people in industrialized countries will have to make in the coming years and decades.

The simple fact is that a LOT of "necessary" business travel really isn't, and could be replaced relatively easily with one or another form of teleconferencing.  

One computer consulting job I worked on years ago had an executive who practically lived in airplanes.  This guy would literally rack up 400,000 miles a year, and would often leave the US on weeks-long trips that would have stops in 5 or 6 countries.  He was visiting with customers for high-end, industrial products that had a high profit margin, so his company was willing to eat the huge travel cost.  But as far as I know they never made a serious effort to trim back his travel.

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Stuart Staniford on October 25, 2005 - 2:47pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Maybe that was rational - if he was a top performing sales guy for his operation, he may well have been bringing in enough sales to more than justify the cost.
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steverino on October 25, 2005 - 3:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
hello.....has anyone heard of teleconference???...in a world of increasingly expensive fossil fuel surely this would be the simplest of answers for fuel reduction..we can certainly modify our lifestyles to accomodate that, i would think...this is a nothing compared to the larger problems of providing food and shelter
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throwaway92614 on October 25, 2005 - 4:15pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Will you get out your personal checkbook and write me a check for a brand-new $100,000 numerically-controlled milling machine based purely on a voice you've heard down the phone line and some grainy webcam images?

I think not. People have a fundamental need to "see it in the flesh," and that will never change. As oil becomes more scarce, the bar will simply go up on business travel, and all air travel will once again revert to an elite, unusual activity, rather than the common activity it is today.

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Yankee on October 25, 2005 - 4:54pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
I don't know--I mean, academia is my only model, but people regularly receive grants for multiple hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars based on the recommendation of a panel of judges (and no face-to-face interview).
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Mad Oilman on October 25, 2005 - 11:28pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
Try to have a teleconference with a group of Egyptian Generals who are in charge of a major new field development. They will laugh at you and you are no longer part of the development.

Try to have a teleconference with one of the nationaol oil companies in India. They will laugh at you and wil not take you seriously as a supplier. They may even blackball you for 3-5 years.

Teleconferencing is great for domestic/European meetings (I've participated). But the 2nd and 3rd world requires my presence. I will send any of my employees anywhere in the word if my customers request it. Even if I lose money. The goodwill created by presence, by actually being on the ground, breaking bread with these guys, is more than worth it.

And I still travel for internal reasons. Our Norwegian facilities and personnel are incredibly capable as their main market is the North Sea, an incredibly regulated marketplace. Problem is, they assume my US manufacturing is to Norwegian North Sea specs.

It's not. It's not worth the cost. US market demands a Chevy. Norway demands a Ferarri. I can build a Ferarri easily. If I built nothing but Ferarris I would destroy my domestic market share.

So I get to go to Norway in January or February to visit multiple facilities to explain the differences. We've been trying to explain this by email and phone for two years to no avail. We still lose money or break even at best on Norwegian bids as they don't understand this.  I'll pound it home soon enough. Face to face. In meetings and over a few beers. It's worth it.

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Murray on October 25, 2005 - 6:12pm Permalink | Subthread | Parent | Comments top
As a retired VP of TQM in a large multinational microelectronics firm I can vouch for the verity of the above observation. We coordinated a very complex company-wide program over a 2 year period to prepare for Y2K and did it all by teleconference and e-mail, including supplier interface. It was the biggest and most complex world-wide project the company had ever undertaken. From it we learned that a very large amount of travel was not necessary, or even productive. However to be effective, you have to get real good at defining terms and working to commonly agreed standards, which of course has the side effect of making the whole business more productive.
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62 comments on Business air travel

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