In this age of instant gratification and do-anything information technology, corporate travel managers haven’t always been the first beneficiaries. While travel management companies and business travelers tasted the first fruits of the latest apps, travel managers have often had to queue up and wait their turn.

United Airlines understands. “We’ve never had a kind of self-service website for corporate,” says Belinda McCormack, the carrier’s sales strategy and projects manager. “Even though we were able to provide some reporting capability on the site,” she said it wasn’t good enough.

In the spring of 2017, the answer was ready to roll out. It’s called “Jetstream” and the aim is to provide comprehensive, on-demand information to business travel executives. Jetstream allows “corporations themselves to use the website to process waivers and favors. They’re able to self serve,” says McCormack. The system provides fine-tuned, hands-on insight into their contract performance with United and the ability to game plan what things would look like should market conditions shift. “You can get the data and play around with it,” she says.

Say you’re working late and need hard data right now. You no longer have to wait for the United sales manager to respond. Travel managers simply log on and retrieve their reports in PDF or Excel. Such is the big picture – served up in weekly, monthly or yearly slices. This critical information includes total spend, both discounted and non-discounted, Premier level breakdowns of business travelers and a Savings Estimator feature by which corporate travel managers can manipulate market share to project potential incremental savings to take full advantage of their relationship with United.

But if travel managers want to take a look at ancillary spend data too, things such as checked luggage fees and preferential seating, it’s there for the taking. “We’ve never been able to provide this before,” McCormack says.

Waivers and favors are the stuff that lubricates relationships between airlines and business travelers – things such as upgrades, United Club memberships or one-time passes, MileagePlus Premier 1K status. Previously, McCormack says such amenities were “negotiated at the beginning of a company’s contract and set in stone for its duration.” Now corporations can adjust to business needs and purchase the perks directly or have their travel agency do so.

Now that Jetstream has been out there for a few months Belinda McCormack says it’s received “rave reviews” about how easy it is to use. “You’re right there and you don’t have to wait. Salespeople are going around and spending time with travel managers showing them how it works. They respond, ‘I can actually do it myself.’ Acceptance has been all we could hope for,” says United’s sales and project manager.

More IT Innovations
Jetstream is perhaps the most visible example of United’s B-to-B information technology initiatives. But here’s an arena where B-to-B and B-to-C overlap. There are currently some 60,000 devices in the hands of UA employees worldwide, each with a variety of applications designed to solve problems that business travelers could encounter while on the road.

United’s vice president of operations technology, Jason Birnbaum, says in a prepared release, “One of our aims was to take our agents from behind the podiums and put them out into the terminals, where they could do things – change seat assignments, re-book passengers and print luggage tags right where the customers are.” The United IT executive adds, “A re-booking transaction that would have taken ten minutes under the old, stationary system now takes less than two.”

All of this is wonderful, unless the system goes down. To handle that contingency United says it’s the sole airline to employ both WiFi and cellular-enabled devices. In the belief that some of the best innovation incubators anywhere reside within the company itself, the carrier has its own in-house development shop turning out custom apps.

So IT savvy is the airline that it earned a coveted spot on this year’s CIO 100 Award list. More evidence of its IT moxie? United was the first airline to offer boarding passes for partner air carriers via its mobile app. This further cements the progress that’s been made in recent years towards offering truly seamless onward connections via Star Alliance airlines. In a prepared release, Kate Gebo, United’s chief customer officer, says, “We found that simply allowing our customers to access boarding passes for their entire itinerary within the same app made a big difference in satisfaction.”

That difference is manifest on every airline with which United partners, such as Lufthansa, Air Canada, ANA and EVA Airways – 19 airlines in all.

Where High Tech meets High-Touch 
IT, no matter how adept, is of little use without the people that animate it, and the policies and procedures that underpin it. To that end, United is laying on a full-court press to improve customer service. The airline:
• Will limit the use of law enforcement aboard its aircraft to safety and security matters only;
• Will not require a customer seated on one of its aircraft to involuntarily give up their seat – unless safety or security is at risk;
• Is increasing passenger compensation for denied boarding, with a cap of $10,000;
• Is creating a customer solutions team to give agents the ability get fliers to their final destination by using nearby airports, ground transportation or other airlines;
• Will make sure crews are booked onto a flight at least 60 minutes prior to departure;
• Will create an automated system for soliciting volunteers to change their travel plans;
• Is empowering employees to resolve customer service issues on the spot;
• Will get rid of the red tape on permanently lost luggage by adopting a “no questions asked” policy on lost bags.

United isn’t leaving airports out of the customer service equation. It’s employing the esoteric art of fine-tuning flight connections at its Bush Intercontinental operation in Houston. The aim is to give fliers shorter, more convenient connection times, as well as better access to more destinations. From IAH United fields almost 500 daily departures to some 170 destinations.

Up in Newark Liberty, United’s key transatlantic gateway, the airline has completely redesigned its security checkpoint, consolidating TSA screening in Terminal C. The highlight is a 17-lane wide, fully automated process.

New Ways to Get There 
Routes and reach are critical to corporate travel managers. United is kicking off the new year, Jan. 18, 2018, with daily nonstop service from Houston to Sydney aboard its new Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner. At 8,596 miles the run will be UAs’ second-longest nonstop. Los Angeles – Singapore holds that esteemed title for the carrier. It nudges out IAH - SYD at some 8,700 miles.

Getting to those international launch pads will be easier too. United has added service to 13 markets, including a quartet of all-new domestic destinations: Champaign/Urbana, IL; Columbia, MO; Rochester, MN and Santa Rosa, CA. While LAX-Singapore is United’s longest nonstop, San Francisco-Santa, Rosa is the shortest.

In all, United and United Express operate more than 4,500 flights daily to 339 airports spanning five continents, helping it lay claim to the planet’s most comprehensive route network.