On my way to CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in
I took my daughter Meira with me on this trip (no, she is not coming to CES, but visiting a friend in NY, I will continue on to Vegas) – and thank God Meira is an incredibly well behaved kid (most of the time). I even received compliments from people seated next to us! Just think of taking an 11 hour flight with an 8 year old…OK, so there are now those little screens in the seatback, but on Continental they made the decision to repeat the same programs throughout the flight…how many times can even my daughter watch the same episode of Friends? What would be so difficult to offer a bit more programming?
And before we get to entertainment—why is it that air travel itself has not budged – it was an 11 hour flight when I started this commute, and twelve years later it is the same 11 hours. During that time the Internet was commercialized, the web was created, billions of dollars of value and real profits were created, and communications were radically changed. I was blessed to be part of that change over the past 12 years. But the changes have been almost exclusively limited to the virtual world. Airlines and airports have remained almost immune to leapfrogs in technology. Oh sure, there have been some bites around the edges, with web based travel agencies, on-line check-in, and so on. The flight itself—no change. They couldn’t even get right my order for vegan food.
The airport – not exactly a bastion of efficiency. Its actually a miracle that we land and take off with very rare real problems, when you think about it…on second thought, don’t think too much about it!
I don’t have any incredible ideas to throw out there – just that it is an area that is crying out for some true visionaries to leapfrog us forward in travel.
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