Future Perfect

The first name that sprung to my mind on the list of frequent flyers was Sameer Khanna, who is on the move almost every month. My conversation with him started off on a very casual note, talking about his ongoing experiences at Siemens as operations manager to the market condition of Dubai. He spoke about the wonderful job opportunities that are available in the Indian market today and regretted his decision of working in a number of countries abroad including the US, the UK, and UAE. We moved on from the bad state of the economy to the companies and brands that were still performing well in the market today, where he named NOKIA as the best and most powerful brand across the world, not only in terms of quality and service but also it’s unique usage of Digital Media to promote the brand. He believed Nokia’s Connecting People campaign and ideology would also make for a very successful airline company.

We shifted gears to briefly talk about the airline industry and discussed the service provided by various airlines. Sameer named British Airways and Lufthansa as one of his favorites, However, he stated that none of them ever came close to Emirates in terms of class and brand name. When he thinks of Emirates, he thinks of Reliability.

He particularly recalls incidents where he has been upgraded to first class on numerous occasions, because he couldn’t stand the economy class aisles as they are too cramped. “It’s such a wonderful feeling that a non-western airline has done so well for itself raising the bar wherever it goes.”

When it came to talking about the future and what changes the airline and tourism industry would experience, he explained how a change in the way we travel will hardly affect our holidaying experiences and immediately dismissed ideas relating to virtual holidaying calling them too artificial and a passing fad. What he did discuss was the concept of airport townships: a new trend that involves building small towns in and around airports solely built for the purpose of housing in transit passengers. In fact a new plan has already been implemented in Dubai where an airport township would house about 20 million citizens!

We discussed other modes of transport as well touching upon the Concorde and new supersonic jets in the process of development. But he feared the faster air travel gets, the costlier it will become.

He talked about his experiences in the US as to how there used to be a small flight that would take about 20 passengers each between NY and Boston, every 15 minutes, as if it were a bus between Mumbai to Pune! He suggested that in the future, air travelling would see drastic changes confined to movement within a city, like Air Taxis.