One of the main disadvantages of flying is being unable to use your mobile phone while in the air. For many people this is a serious problem, because being out of touch with texts and emails for several hours at a time can be unbearable.

Virgin Atlantic has the answer though, and will be upgrading systems on ten of their new Airbus A330-300s to allow passengers to use email and text messaging services during flight by 2011.

Virgin announced that for 2011 Virgin will offer the service for passengers using systems such as Blackberry, PDAs and other devices. This news on the back of the announcement that Virgin will be spending $2.1 billion on its ten new planes, Airbus A330-300 aircrafts.

The new planes will be full of technical wizardry, including USB ports and the functionality to use mobile devices, but not for making calls.

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Despite the recession, a great many people are still making regular business trips both in the UK and internationally. However not everyone is making the most of their business travel by saving Air Miles, and earning free flights and other benefits.

Air Miles can be earned with every flight, and then exchanged for free flights to destinations around the world. You can also earn Air Miles when you stay at hotels by using your credit card, when you fill your car up with petrol and when you buy your shopping each week.

As the recession is eating into everyone’s profits, it becomes even more necessary to save money wherever possible, and by collecting Air Miles you’re able to do that. If you are a regular business traveller and you’re not earning Air Miles, you’re missing out on potentially hundreds of pounds worth of free business flights each year.

Can you or your business afford to do that?

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A survey by KDS noted that businesses were making severe cutbacks on their air travel, especially during the peak summer months. This has caused business deals between the UK and the US in particular to suffer as UK businesses are reluctant to pay for travel to the US because of the expense.

Businesses have reportedly been cutting back on their flights even when they do travel, with business class travel and first class travel being dropped in favour of cheap flights from budget airlines such as Ryan Air and easyJet.

In addition to air travel, hotels have suffered as businesses are cutting back their hotel stays, and opting for the cheapest locations when they do have to stay overnight.

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According to research, the recession isn’t going to restrict UK businesses from their business travel plans, it’s merely causing them to downgrade their travel plans to cheaper alternatives. Furthermore, the cuts made by flying economy instead of business class have proven so encouraging for businesses, that many UK businesses say they’ll stick to cheap flights even when the recession has ended and the economy has recovered.

The Association of Corporate Travel Executives conducted research of different travel buyers and found that many intending to stick to economy travel even after the recession ends, with Paul Robin, the founder of Business Travel Market, adding:

It would appear that some of the travel restrictions that were forced on many business travellers have proved workable and will be here to stay.

The recession hit us fast and travel buyers responded quickly to fine tune their travel management policies and budgets. The survey that we conducted in conjunction with ACTE implies that the changes have worked to reduce costs, business has continued and when we return to financial stability those changes that have worked well will remain in place.

According to the figures, over 50% of businesses have reduced their travel budgets by downgrading the flights they book.

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According to a survey by the National Business Travel Association (NBTA), Europeans aren’t particularly phased by the global recession and are generally planning on maintaining their level of business travel in the next 12 months.

52% of businessmen and women said they’d make the same number of trips in the next 12 months and 22% believe they’ll make more journeys in the next year.

26% of those polled said they expected to cut back on their travel in the next 12 months.

Kevin Maguire of the NBTA stated:

While the majority of business travellers understand the need to be prudent around costs, the most important issue for them when booking travel is convenience.

That’s why it is so vital that travel managers work with their communications colleagues to inform employees how travel changes are designed to meet both goals – cutting costs while offering convenience.

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The recession has affected everyone in the world, from single mothers on a budget to millionaire businessmen. The recession has now also affected private jet travel as business executives have been forced to swap their private jets for economy class travel aboard airlines.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has revealed that use of private jets has fallen by 20% in just 6 months as the recession has taken hold of the most elite of sectors.

The UK was the fastest growing market in the world for luxury air travel, but the (more…)

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