Ground-to-Air Calling Will Begin in ’94
For many frequent business travelers, long airplane trips represent a chance to get some paperwork done uninterrupted by calls at the office.
That may not be true much longer.
Starting early next year, two of the major suppliers of in-flight communications services will begin offering ground-to-air calling capabilities.
In January, USAir will begin equipping more than 400 of its jets with seat-back video screens and phones that allow people on the ground to page people in flight.
America West will be the next on line, said Sandra Goeken, president of In-Flight Phone Corp., the Oakbrook, Ill.-based company that makes the system.
The airline will have the system on 85 of its jets early next year and plans to have it on all planes by May.
GTE Airfone Inc., also based in Oakbrook, expects to have a ground-to-air calling system in place during the first quarter of 1994 on Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and USAir Shuttle, spokeswoman Carol Comeaux said.
The company, which is the largest supplier of phones for airplanes, plans to have the service on more than 1,000 jets by the end of the year.
The GTE system, which is already being installed on Delta Shuttle planes that fly among New York, Boston and Washington, will eventually have data and fax transmission capability and allow seat-to-seat calling on the same aircraft.
The company says the all-digital system, called Genstar, dramatically improves the quality of sound compared to current airplane phones.
While phones on flights have been around for nearly a decade, until recently passengers could only call out. People on the ground couldn’t contact passengers in flight.
Recent advances in digital technology have made ground signals clear enough to be received.
Calling an Airplane
In-Flight’s system works by having passengers sign on to the system to see if they have been paged.
By signing on, the passenger is letting the paging system know his or her exact flight and seat information. If the page symbol lights up on the screen, the passenger swipes a credit card through the seat back to receive the page. It costs $3 to sign on to the system, and $2 every time a passenger receives a page. Use of the phone costs a flat rate of $2 a minute.
If the page contains a number where the person on the ground can be reached, the passenger can automatically dial the number by pressing the “send” button.
To leave a page, the person on the ground dials 1-800-SKYWAVE and asks if the person being paged has signed on yet.
In-Flight designed the system so that passengers can be disturbed in flight only if they acknowledge that they want to be reached by signing on to receive pages, Goeken said. At the same time, however, the company wanted to expand the number of people who had access to phones in flight.
The system is designed to be placed in every seat back, not just in middle seats or at the front or back of the plane, she said. “Research shows that over 90% of people who fly are going coach. That’s the largest part of the market,” Goeken said.
Airfone works a little differently, Comeaux said.
Passengers get their own permanent in-flight phone number so that someone on the ground can reach them without knowing their specific seat and flight information. The ground caller dials 1-800-AIRFONE, then enters the person’s in-flight phone number and hangs up.
If the passenger is on the airplane, the phone number of the person calling lights up on the screen in the seat back of the phone closest to the passenger.
If the passenger wishes to answer the call, he or she swipes a credit card through a card reader on the seat back.
The charge is $2.50 to “set up” plus $2.50 a minute. The phones are placed in every other seat back so they are within reach of every passenger.
Lease to Sleep
With hotel taxes on the rise in many states, corporate travel departments looking for ways to cut costs have come up with a novel way to save on taxes: leasing hotel rooms.
“The incentive is the savings to the corporation,” said Wayne Berens, vice president of industry affairs and corporate travel for American Express in New York. American Express recently began leasing rooms in two hotels in New York City.
“If you occupy a room for 181 consecutive days or longer, you don’t have to pay state or local taxes,” he said.
New York hotel taxes and fees, which run about 23% of the room price, are the highest in the nation, he said. Leasing is really a form of bulk buying, with the commodity overnight stays.
The only risk is that the corporation has to have business travelers to be assured that the rooms will be used, Berens said. So far that has not been a problem for American Express. In fact, the program has been so successful that the company plans to expand its leasing strategy to other cities. In February, the company will begin leasing rooms in Phoenix and London.
The only restriction hotels place on the rooms is that they be used by American Express employees, he said. American Express cannot resell the space to another company. Otherwise, the rooms essentially belong to American Express.
“Since we in effect own those rooms, we can stylize them any way we want,” Berens said. For example, the company places American Express literature and special promotional materials in the rooms.
So far, American Express has not had any trouble finding rooms to lease. Indeed, as word has filtered out, the company has received calls from hotels in other cities hoping to strike similar deals.
“It’s a win-win situation,” said Berens. “We are saving money, and the hotelier doesn’t have to sell those rooms.”
Not all hotels think it’s a growth market, however. “There is not a companywide effort to market” leased rooms, said Laurie Verz, spokeswoman for the Grand Hyatt New York.
“There is only a small market for this type of business, and with vacancy rates for apartments in New York over 10%, a lot of real estate companies are offering shorter-term leases,” Verz said.
Still, the hotel chain does consider volume accounts depending on the volume and history of the client, she said.
