I was at the “HP Future is…” and was inspired to do an article on what the future of air travel would look like in a year. Instead of doing a “Top 10 article” I decided to do a video of what taking a flight in Dec 2010 would be like, with the advent of social media and new technologies, which airline brands can use. On this hypothetical flight, I managed to fly Business Class at a price cheaper than Economy class, on an airline that does low-cost Long haul! I ordered food on Twitter, streamed happenings from the flight Live back home via Wifi and “rented” a power point to plug in my Mac. I was even notified by SMS that my bags are lost and that got a free cab voucher from them for pick-up. All in all, a great improvement over the last one year Enjoy the video! For me, the future is… now. Airline executives need to embrace new technologies NOW in order to take control of …

This is a narrative based on the traveler experiences I’ve read on internet forums and blogs, as well as personal experiences. Names of people and airlines have been changed. Hope you enjoy reading it.
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It was John’s parents 50th wedding anniversary and he had meticulously planned a surprise bash for them in their London family home. The last step was to book the flights for his two year old son, Tim, his wife, Lucy and himself, from Toronto to London. This seemed simple enough with expedia.com.
Within seconds, the search results showed over ten pages of results, with prices differing by less than $10 in some cases. He ruled out the cheapest options, Air India and SAS, based on the poor experiences of his friends who had flown these airlines before. He was debating between British Airways and United Airlines. Though he was a member of both their frequent flyer programs, it didn’t make much difference to him as they were equally difficult to redeem miles from and had similar benefits. He had flown United before and didn’t quite enjoy the experience. He finally decided to go ahead with the British Airways flight, via New York.