Rodney

No, but I knew a guy in the defense industries used to fly to Scotland for a two-hour meeting monthly status meeting, then fly back. And he did a lot of that.

There's no question that, especially on business deals between companies, you need everybody in the same room for the meetings in which agreements are hammered out and in which major decisions are made. But there are a lot of mid-quarter status report meetings, where everybody already knows everybody and no major policy shifts are expected, where teleconference or even NetMeeting is good enough.

Frankly, part of the reason that the airlines are hurting is that business travel _is_ down -- because teleconferencing is on the rise, and thus businessmen are traveling less (and corporations are trying to cut travel costs in any case). Airlines grew to depend on those full-price non-discount fares that business travelers paid to go somewhere on 1 or 2 days' notice, especially during the dot-com boom but even before.

So, as I said before -- the airlines need to find a different technology/business model if they are to offer a service that 1) the remaining customers can afford and 2) is safe. Or step aside for somebody else with the next big idea.