Business Travel Tips

Transportation Security Administration (TSA) Deputy Administrator, Gale Rossides, testified before members of Congress on TSA’s pay-for-performance compensation system.

Ms. Rossides explained that pay-for- performance system provides incentives to the best performing officers. She says there are two reasons TSA relies on pay for performance.

Security is the first and foremost. Second, it is to instill a culture of high performance and accountability in our workforce. [...] How does PASS improve security? PASS rewards the individual performance necessary to achieve TSA’s organizational goals and that increases security.

TSA’s pay-for-performance system is driven by validated data. Its performance metrics are standardized, measurable, observable and almost completely objective. PASS has been adjusted based on feedback from our Officers about what the real job is. (source)

Canadian carrier WestJet announced it is disabling the credit-card readers on self-service ticket kiosks at 28 Canadian airports.

The decision was made amid an investigation into the kiosks’ security. Financial institutions have begun an investigation into credit card fraud at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport focusing on self-service check-in kiosks there.

Passengers will still be able to use the kiosks to check in using their ticket reference numbers or passports. (source)

According to data released Friday by Atlanta-based Innovata, one of two airline industry databases, travel schedules for November at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) will suffer a 16.4 percent drop in flights compared with a year earlier.

That means a reduction of more than 1,900 weekly takeoffs and landings at LAX by late fall. As a result, 163,600 fewer seats will be available to airline passengers each week beginning in November, a 10.7 percent drop from the same period last year.

The Daily Breeze of Torrance, Calif., which published the Innovata’s data, says that as big carriers like American, United and Delta have announced the most significant flight reductions at LAX, low-cost carrier Southwest Airlines is not planning any service cutbacks with more than 1,600 weekly departures and arrivals at LAX in November, the same number of flights offered a year earlier.

The newspaper, citing data by Innovata, adds that other so-called international gateway airports will see less than 2 percent worth of weekly service cuts. Compared with last year, New York JFK stands to lose only 48 arrivals and departures per week in November, while San Francisco International is slated to lose 84 weekly flights.

July 31 is the last day for taking advantage of the offer Korean Air launched on flights from US West Coast to Mumbai, India.

You can travel from Los Angeles, San Francisco or Seattle to Mumbai (BOM) for $1,169 round-trip.
As the fare includes fuel surcharge, it does not include taxes and fees. Also, you have to add $80 for weekend departures.

Travel period: outbound between August 21 and September 30.
No minimum stay is required, maximum stay is 6 months.
Offer details at koreanair.com/.

It seems time for videoconferencing technology is coming. The New York Times reports as the technology has matured to the point where it is often practical, affordable and more productive. As a consequence, with rising travel costs and airlines increasingly cutting service, companies large and small are rethinking the face-to-face meeting — and business travel.

However the newspaper quoted Forrester Research analysts as saying the emerging trend goes well beyond a reaction to rising travel costs and a weakening economy: “These technology tools are going to change the way corporations think about travel and work in the long run,”

Past predictions that technology could replace travel have been frequent and premature. The main difference today, analysts say, is that the technology is finally catching up to its promise. [...] Companies of all sizes are beginning to shift to Web-based meetings for training and sales presentations. “Only in the last two years has the technology gotten to point where it really makes sense to use it,” [...] A report last month by the Global e-Sustainability Initiative, a group of technology companies, and the Climate Group, an environmental organization, estimated that up to 20 percent of business travel worldwide could be replaced by Web-based and conventional videoconferencing technology.

Even if the most dedicated business travelers keep to do much of their work in person with clients, they are increasingly using online collaboration tools for work within their firms.

- Costs -
Completed telepresence rooms, typically with three huge curved screens (and a fourth screen above for shared work), custom lighting and acoustics, cost up to $350,000.
Cisco, which has more than 200 telepresence rooms, figures it is avoiding $100 million in yearly travel costs, and reducing its greenhouse gas emissions from air travel by 10 percent. H.P. says air travel among its offices with telepresence rooms is down 25 percent.

When used regularly, the rooms pay for themselves within a year, analysts estimate. (source)