On the Road: Only Essential Travelers Remain, Warily, in Egypt

“We had several thousand clients there before the summer, but we’re down now to probably only a couple of hundred people in-country, mostly corporate people staying in facilities just outside of Cairo where they feel potentially less impacted than people would be in hotels,” Bruce McIndoe, the chief executive of iJet International, a global risk management and response company based in Annapolis, Md., said on Monday.

Last month, when the turmoil began accelerating, corporate travel managers with employees in Egypt were reminded once again of the growing importance of so-called duty-of-care legal provisions in countries around the world. When applied to traveling employees, those provisions hold corporate executives responsible for maintaining risk management travel policies to help ensure safe working conditions.

Among other things, employers are expected to know where their traveling employees are, to regularly evaluate security and safety conditions in places where they send employees and to be able to communicate with them. Employers also are generally expected to have emergency procedures, including those for getting employees out quickly.

I will add here that business travelers, especially those in places where civil turmoil or natural disasters are factors, also have responsibilities, beyond the legal obligations of their employers. Even the most carefully managed corporate travel risk systems begin to fail when travelers in such circumstances book out of policy — that is, freelance their own arrangements that a manager back home can’t keep track of in an emergency. Communication is a two-way street.

In Egypt, where major corporations like Royal Dutch Shell have closed offices and cut off nearly all business travel, companies with travelers still in the country have mostly pulled back to secured areas, where conditions are being monitored hour by hour.

Business travelers in Egypt are mostly “people working on various kinds of contracts that they don’t want to depart. They’re mainly people who have an essential need to be there at this point,” said John Rendeiro, the vice president for security and intelligence at International SOS, a global security and medical emergency response company based near Philadelphia.

“Most of our clients had already drawn down the nonessential folks” since early summer, he said. Most who remain “are in corporate lodging, and they’re mainly essential people who have really good reason to be there and already have a pretty good security posture,” he said.

Now, travel risk experts say, the basic requirements are caution and good information. Emergency plans and communications systems should be carefully evaluated, they add. Few business travelers still in Egypt need to be reminded of the basic precautions issued in government travel alerts worldwide, like avoiding mobs. Most who are still in Egypt know the landscape by now.

And indications are that security conditions will worsen, at least in the short term, they agree. “We have our travel services on the ground, where we already had networks of security providers, medical providers who are constantly monitoring the situation. These are people who essentially know the neighborhood very well already,” Mr. Rendeiro said.

“What we’re telling people now is don’t send people there if they’re not there already,” Mr. McIndoe said. “So far, most of the transient people we have pulled out went out on commercial flights, but that is complicated by the curfew.”

At the busy Cairo International Airport, which handles 16 million passengers a year, flight delays were mounting over the weekend, in some cases stretching to 12 hours and more. But delays were minimal by Monday afternoon. One major factor in air travel was the curfew imposed last Wednesday in much of the country, causing logistical challenges for passengers, flight crews and airport employees. There were also some problems caused by limited access and checkpoints on airport approach roads.

“In the last couple of days we’ve been working through the curfew,” Mr. McIndoe said. In recent days, he added, the company has moved out more than two dozen clients who opted to leave simply because security measures on travel liability insurance policies had been activated by rapidly deteriorating conditions.

Airport officials are struggling to accommodate the growing numbers of travelers at the airport, including those backed up at visa and immigration and ticket counters where staffing was a problem as some employees found it difficult to get to work. But the curfew remains the biggest challenge, and Mr. McIndoe said that his company had been transporting clients to the airport in security vehicles. “Basically, we’re working with the airlines to make sure we secure seats,” he said. “And we’re also transporting people in convoys, with a lead vehicle probing for roadblocks or other issues.”

Partly on assumptions that the Egyptian military will be able to control unrest on the streets, and given the solid communications and transportation in place in Egypt, there is no obvious sense of panic among the foreign business travelers who remain. Nevertheless, Mr. Rendeiro said, “We have arranged for planes on standby, in case they’re needed.”

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Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.

Itineraries: Wi-Fi Is Increasingly Essential for Airline Travelers

Tony Drockton, who owns a luxury handbag company in Southern California, used to take the overnight flight to New York, rather than waste business hours out of touch.

But now, his flight time is his work time as airlines increasingly offer Wi-Fi connections on their planes.

“I need to stay connected so people don’t realize where I am,” said Mr. Drockton, who now travels with a laptop, smartphone and over-the-ears headphones. “It allows me to fly during business hours and not miss any day.”

As to those travelers who enjoyed a few hours of being out of touch with the office, those days may be ending. Before Wi-Fi, “you had an excuse not to be in touch if you didn’t want to be,” said Henry H. Harteveldt, co-founder of Atmosphere Research Group, an airline and travel industry analyst in San Francisco. “The one last bastion of being off the grid has been taken away.”

And as airlines race to create connectivity on international flights through satellite Wi-Fi, the ability to stay online in the skies will only increase, experts say.

“Passengers have an expectation of ubiquitous connectivity in their lives, especially younger travelers,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “Walking on the street, in coffee shops, and it frustrates them when they get on a plane and they are told they’re offline. The traveler wants to have control over when they go online.”

Others echoed his analysis. “People want to be connected 24/7,” said Jonathan Kletzel, a transportation and logistics analyst at PWC. “It’s a question of whether airlines are getting ahead of the curve or not.”

For now, technology use in the sky remains lower than on other modes of transportation, said Joseph P. Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University.

Even so, Wi-Fi Internet access has expanded to 153 million passengers in 2011 from 153,000 in 2009, according to Gogo Wireless, a Wi-Fi provider for airlines.

According to a report this year from the Chaddick Institute, the percentage of air travelers using technology at “random selected points” on a flight was 28.4 percent in 2011, up from 23.2 percent in 2010 and 17.6 percent in 2009.

The report found that more travelers were bringing their own devices, including tablets and e-readers, with them on planes. One in 12 airline passengers is now using a tablet, and that number continues to grow. Tablets account for almost 30 percent of all technology use on commercial flights, and that share is also likely to grow. The use of tablets and technology, in general, tends to be “significantly higher on business-oriented flights,” the report said.

This leaves more than 70 percent of passengers who are not using a device, and may be using the airlines’ in-flight entertainment options, Dr. Schwieterman said.

Wi-Fi stretches back commercially four to five years. Now, nine commercial airlines have Wi-Fi air-to-ground service on all or some of their domestic flights. The fees depend on the length of the flight, and tend to range from $1.95 to $19 or more, according to Gogo.

Travelers are using the connection to do more than send e-mail. What travelers want, especially business travelers, is a myriad methods to stay productive and entertained while en route to their destination, airline experts said. They may use their own laptops or tablets as well as the in-flight entertainment system.

Mr. Drockton, for example, said he used e-mail, air-to-ground videoconferencing, the airline’s instant messenger system and the entertainment system in the seat back in front of him when he was flying. He said he relied on the power outlet under his seat to keep his laptop charged. “I plug in before they even close the door,” he said. “I’m already working before they take off.”

Until a few years ago, the airlines were a “technology wasteland,” Dr. Schwieterman said. Now, most major airlines, even those that were late to Wi-Fi, have committed to teaming up with one of the four major Wi-Fi providers. The airlines “want you to know that Wi-Fi is on the flight,” he said. “They know they need it for brand positioning.”

Still, Internet connectivity in flight has its shortcomings, though Mr. Harteveldt and other frequent fliers said they expected it to improve in its next generation. “If the Wi-Fi system is maxed out, it slows down,” Mr. Harteveldt said. “You can log off and not be able to get back on, or be booted off the system.”

Typically, the bandwidth of the Wi-Fi on a single-aisle plane like a Boeing 737 or an Airbus A320 can handle 25 users at a time. If one traveler begins to download a large file, “the system slows to a crawl,” he said.

Kevin P. Nichols, 39, director of content strategy for SapientNitro, said that had been his experience. “It’s inconsistent, and you never know if it’s going to work or not,” he said.

Mr. Nichols said Wi-Fi and in-flight entertainment provided by the airlines were among the factors travelers now considered. “There are a lot of drivers in selecting an airline,” he said. “It’s people having access to what they want. We continually want to be plugged in.”

As for the future of in-flight technology, Mr. Harteveldt said it depended on technological developments, travelers’ preferences and airlines’ budgets. The airlines tend to update cabins every five years. Mr. Harteveldt predicted that within 10 years, flights would be a “B.Y.O. entertainment” environment — that is, bring your own.

Until then, travelers who want to stay productive and entertained en route to their business meetings are dependent on Wi-Fi.

Or, as Mr. Drockton put it: “It’s just about convenience and connectivity. I need it to work.”

Why 'Tone at the Top' is Essential in Preventing Employee Fraud

I was recently involved in a fraud investigation of the CFO of a privately held company that spent years following the directives of the majority shareholder to run the majority shareholder?s personal and/or nonexistent expenses through the company.