Air Phone Cos. Court Corporates

<H1> Air Phone Cos. Court Corporates</H1>By Jay Campbell

Competition for business traveler use of in-flight telecommunications is heating up as two of the three major providers develop new corporate discount programs.

AT&T Wireless has added a second option to its Air Gold program, allowing companies to pay 99 cents per minute with a monthly charge of $25 per enrollee. The new plan is part of a test marketing effort targeting 5,000 companies in geographic areas where AT&T Wireless' airline partners-Alaska, American, Northwest and Southwest-have strongholds.

AT&T Wireless' original corporate program, offering a 25 percent discount for a certain volume promise, remains intact. Both programs offer monthly management reports detailing who called whom and how much it cost.

In-Flight Phone Corp., which provides its FlightLink technology on Continental and America West, will launch a corporate program by mailing informational packages mainly to Continental's and America West's corporate customers in November. The company already has spoken to 60 corporations, but no one is signed yet.

At the same time, GTE Airfone's corporate discount program (<I>BTN</I>, Feb. 12) has landed 22 corporate contracts, up from eight in March. Jeff Kurn, corporate travel MIS manager for Hewlett-Packard, said the company has seen "dramatic reductions in our costs and increased usage since signing the deal." But, he added, "the technology is still evolving and there is still uneven reception. They're not 100 percent ready for data communications yet either." Clear or not, the phones and e-mail connections are popular enough with corporate travelers that GTE now has 300,000 corporate enrollees.

In June, GTE signed USAir to become its ninth airline partner, joining Delta, Delta Shuttle, Midwest Express, Reno Air, TWA, United, Shuttle by United and the USAir Shuttle. USAir had dropped IFPC in October because "the level of service did not meet our expectations," a USAir spokesman said.

Making assurances that the problems are all in the past, IFPC's product manager for communications services, Matt Yazici, said the company will create a "real in-flight office." He said IFPC is negotiating to take on two news providers and will introduce live television on 300 Continental aircraft next summer. The current FlightLink system is available on 221 America West and Continental aircraft.