Business Travel Gets an Upgrade at the Airport

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photograph by John Christenson

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photograph by Chris Crisman

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Business Travel Gets an Upgrade at the Airport

Fiona Morrison
Director of Brand Management and Advertising
JetBlue Airways
Forest Hills, New York

Flight of Fancy

Fiona Morrison, 46, leads a team that has helped develop the passenger-experience elements of T5, JetBlue's new $743 million terminal at JFK, which opened October 1.

"The airport should deliver as much of an experience as the flight itself. There are a million little touches that we've sprinkled throughout T5. We chose Italian furniture that's both sturdy and beautiful; we used indirect lighting and installed colorful, custom-design carpeting. If a space looks like a food court, people will treat it like one.

I love talking about the baggage-claim area, because it encapsulates what we've tried to do throughout the building. Our architect, Gensler, came up with the idea of installing backlit blue panels on the walls, and we've covered the luggage carousels with bright orange rugs. People go to baggage claim expecting a dark, dingy basement, and instead find themselves in a gorgeous space. It's so unexpected to be standing in this warm glow of color -- it makes people happy."

Pankaj Shukla
Director of RFID Business Development
Motorola
Rockville, Maryland

Radio Flier

Pankaj Shukla, 48, sells Motorola's luggage-sorting solutions -- which are built on radio-frequency-identification technology -- to airlines and airports, most of which still use bar-code optical-scanner systems to handle baggage.

"A lost bag tends to stick in a person's memory more than a delayed or canceled flight. It's such a major inconvenience. In 2006, more than 34 million bags were lost or mishandled worldwide, at a cost of $3.8 billion in lost productivity. To remedy the problem, the technology we use to track luggage is called 'passive RFID.' A small chip is embedded in each bag tag. As baggage rolls down the belt, the chip picks up radio waves emitted by readers positioned at different points, and sends back a message saying, 'Here I am.' The RFID read rate is 99.5%, versus 80% to 90% for optical scanners. Bags that aren't read get handled manually, and that's when most of the problems occur.

We've deployed our solution in Hong Kong and Las Vegas, with great results. The Las Vegas airport processes around 70,000 pieces of baggage on a busy day. Since implementing RFID, only 350 bags a day need to be handled manually."

Emily McHugh
Founder and Designer
Casauri
Fort Pierce, Florida

Bag of Tricks

Emily McHugh, 32, is a bag designer whose nine-year-old company is one of only a handful selling TSA-compliant laptop bags that let passengers pass through airport security without removing computers from their cases. They're available at boutiques such as Fred Segal and Flight 001.

"It's not easy to bridge the divide between function and style, but that's the reason we're in business. You can have a bag with all the functionality in the world, but if people don't want to carry it because it looks bad, what's the point? TSA guidelines say that nothing should be on top of a laptop when it goes through the scanner, so a checkpoint-friendly bag can't have a pocket or a flap on the front. We've created one case that unzips and flips open like a lid, with the computer secured by a Velcro strap. We've also designed a sleeve without pockets that can go through without being opened at all.

My sister Helena and I design collaboratively. We bounce around ideas that are based on our own tastes, then make a sample and test it ourselves. Does this compartment need to be bigger? Should we take off that pocket? It's this back and forth that allows us to make bags that work on every level."

Chris Stidman
Vice President of Strategic Planning
Best Buy
Minneapolis, Minnesota

Wit's Vend

Chris Stidman, 39, developed Best Buy Express, a self-service kiosk that sells tech gadgets, accessories, and gift cards. So far this year, he has rolled out 12 of the kiosks at eight U.S. airports, including Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

"We thought about airport stores, but ruled it out as not viable. Then an employee came to us with the idea of kiosks. He was extremely passionate and convinced us that Best Buy Express was an ideal way to reach the customer who shows up for a flight without his BlackBerry. There was already a company, ZoomSystems, that operated nonbranded kiosks at airports around the country. We partnered with them, adjusted the mix of products for sale, and were able to bring the concept to market in 150 days.