A Wild Tangent

September 17th, 2008 by Louis DiMeglio

As I sit at Dulles Airport outside DC, waiting for yet another delayed flight, I feel compelled to write a post about traveling as part of the cost of doing business. This morning I had a flight scheduled that was supposed to leave at 6:45am. During dinner last night I got an e-mail from United stating that the flight would instead be leaving at 7:30a. As I arrived at the airport this morning I received another e-mail saying it would instead leave at 8:15a. Since then the flight time has been announced as 7:45, 7:10 and now 7:16. Is there anyone left out there that wonders why the airlines are always struggling? Who really wants to put themselves through the torture of travel? I look forward to the day that we all have a Cisco Telepresence type set-up at our offices and even “face-to-face” meetings can be virtual.

What’s really set me off this morning is the back and forth on the flight time. I know that there are many things that can cause a flight delay, but to move the departure time, in both directions, four times within one hour, how is that possible? I can only imagine the reaction of ScienceLogic customers if we announced the release date for the next version of the product and then proceeded to change it four times that week. There really isn’t another business in the world, other than the airlines, that could get away with this.

Assuming I eventually get to Interop NY, I will be on the look out for vendors that are working on ways to send me to my next meeting over Gigabit Ethernet!

Popularity: 3% [?]

September 17th, 2008