Airlines lack female focus in club class

Ground Floor:This year the global airline industry is forecasting a loss of $1.7 billion (€1.29 billion). It sounds terrible until you remember that in 2001 it was thrown into chaos and the annual loss was $13 billion, writes Sheila O'Flanagan

Airlines have been working steadily to get back into the black since then, both at the high end and the low end of the market.

The ferocity of competition in the budget sector is legendary, but the bar has been steadily rising as far as business travel is concerned, and the airlines are making ever more extravagant claims regarding the comfort of its high-paying business class customers.

British Airways recently announced a £100 million revamp of its Club World Class to give travellers more space, flat beds and an enhanced entertainment system.

According to chief executive Willie Walsh, BA's premium cabins are its "most profitable" segment, which is why it is reconfiguring its aircraft to increase Club World capacity by 8 per cent.

BA is looking to keep the business traveller away from the business class-only airlines which have taken to the skies. Last year Eos and Maxjet were launched flying from New York, Washington and Las Vegas to London; Eurofly, an Italian operator, flies from New York to Milan and 2007 should see the launch of Silverjet and Elysair.

All of them are pitching for the same market - the business traveller who doesn't want to spend two or three hours in the airport before boarding.

Some of them are offering "cheap" business class flights (Silverjet, for example, will be offering saver, standard and flexible tickets - the cheapest pricing also means 100 per cent cancellation fees), but the general target of these carriers is not price but service.

The business class-only carriers are aiming to woo people from standard airlines by being more flexible and by making sure that travellers are not hanging around crowded terminals - Silverjet hopes to have a dedicated terminal at Luton for its soon-to-be cossetted business passengers. The lure of a 30-45 minute check-in in these delay-ridden times is very appealing.

The battle between the specialist airlines and the traditional carriers is set to hot up as they both go after the time-poor, cash-rich traveller.

The gulf between budget travel and "executive" travel is growing ever wider. As more and more people squash on to cheap flights to Prague, those who are flitting around the world for business rather than pleasure want an ever greater level of comfort. The question is if they will pay those premium flexible fares to get both the benefits of leg room and flat beds or whether, in the end, cost will be the final consideration.

Much slashing of prices reinvigorated the industry after 9/11, but the focus is now definitely on making the flying experience a less fraught one for the business traveller.

The demands of business passengers who refused to be parted from their laptops meant that the very strict rules on cabin baggage post-September 11th were quickly amended to allow laptop-carrying bags.

Most business class cabins now offer generous storage space for laptops, coats and other on-board "essentials".

Understandably, though, many companies will use budget flights for shorter trips within Europe and the more recent EU rules about bringing liquid and cosmetics in your hand luggage has caused many of my female friends no end of heartbreak on their business trips.

Clearly the female members of the EU Commission were out to lunch when they decided on the allowable contents of the clear, sealable plastic bag which you now have to present at the security check-point. Many of our favourite products don't come in less than 100ml sizes, so there has to be an element of cosmetic culling.

I'm not generally a girly sort of person and I don't normally freak out over the fairly meagre contents of my cosmetics bag, but there are certain products I like to use, none of which seem to be available in dinky hand-luggage size. While I realise this is a trivial matter in the general scheme of things it is, nevertheless, important to the female business traveller.

When you're going on a business trip you want to look your best. It's a matter of confidence. If your hair looks like a mobile home for a demented family of birds because you can't bring the 200ml bottle of favoured shampoo with you then you're not going to be confident.

(Mascara is also considered a gel or liquid. Any woman who's jabbed herself in the eye with a mascara wand can testify to its potential as a hazardous item, but most mascaras tend to end up as solid gunk after a couple of weeks and so cannot seriously be considered as a liquid!)

Even when you do your best it's not always enough. On my most recent journey, having pared down the cosmetics to the bare essentials for an overnight trip, I presented my resealable plastic bag at the security desk in Dublin airport to be told that it wasn't the standard resealable bag.

Mine was smaller and closed with a zip. Theirs was a kind of food storage bag. Mine was better - but I had to transfer my mascara and lippy from one bag to the other anyway.

Travelling business class wouldn't have made a difference at security and I wouldn't expect it to.

Ultimately, any airline that wants to offer business-only flights really needs to choose its market carefully, which is why most of them will be between major business centres like New York, London and Singapore.

If you want to go to Heathrow you'll have to take a private jet, but that way you can bring as much shampoo as you like!

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