Business travelers uneasy about latest airline security moves

DENVER --Standing at the end of a line that snaked from the security checkpoint through the food court all the way to the ticket counters at Denver International Airport, frequent business traveler Dan Fender pondered his future and imagined the worst.

"I'll probably try to travel less. Or take the bus," he said.

A 24-hour bus ride instead of a two-hour flight?

"It's looking pretty good right now," said Fender, facing a 90-minute wait Thursday for his flight back to Sacramento, Calif.

The future -- or at least the convenience -- of U.S. air travel has again been thrown into turmoil, this time because a plot to blow up America-bound jetliners with liquid bombs. The government immediately banned liquids from the cabins on U.S. flights, forcing millions of people to repack or discard everything form lip balm and shampoo to bottled water and sunscreen.

Analysts said it's hard to see anything replacing airlines for travelers who spend more than $200 billion each year flying for business, but they all expressed concern about the severity of security crackdowns that are bound to come.

Analysts said airlines will be punished immediately by the cost of canceled flights and in the longer term will spend more on security. But experts and industry officials said the latest terrorism scare could not be compared to the attacks five years ago in the United States that sent the air industry spiraling.

For now, one of the biggest worries for business travelers would be a British-style ban on all carryon luggage, which would include laptop computers and other expensive equipment.

Denise Kaigler, a public-relations executive of Adidas AG's Canton, Mass.-based Reebok brand, pushed back her London-to-Boston flight from Thursday to Friday in hopes that travel restrictions would be eased. She worried her cell phone, Blackberry and iPod would only be allowed in checked baggage.

"I will be completely disconnected from work for about six to seven hours," Kaigler said in a phone interview. And that's not counting the long wait at Heathrow airport.

The business person who really, absolutely must travel will still fly, analysts say.

"Business travelers tend to be frequent travelers, so they tend to be the most up to date on what's going on. And they tend to be the most resilient," said Caleb Tiller, spokesman for the 2,700-corporate-member National Business Travel Association.

Travelers every day across the nation remove their shoes at airports largely because of Richard Reid, the would-be "shoe bomber" whose plot was foiled in 2001. The prospect of 10 airliners blowing up over the Atlantic will loom equally large, said Kevin Mitchell, founder of the Business Travelers Coalition.

"Things won't return to normal next week," he said. "This is going to have some kind of lasting impact."

Mitchell, who formed the travel buyer's group in 1994 and acts as an advocate for travelers, said the risk to airlines isn't that companies will eliminate travel. He said they could use alternatives such as video conferencing or driving.

"If I'm a guy that used to take 10 trips in a quarter, I now make six or seven," he said. "That's where the economics of the airline industry start to unravel."

Laurie Alexander, a spokeswoman for Carlson Wagonlit Travel, a global corporate travel coordinator with its U.S. headquarters in Minneapolis, said calls from clients were up slightly Thursday, but there was no sense of panic or widespread cancelations. Travelers were even booking flights to London.

It won't be fear that nudges business travelers off airplanes, Tiller said. It will be inconvenience, which may boost interest in charter flights and private jets.

Inquiries were pouring in Thursday, said Roger Woolsey, president and CEO of Million Air, a Texas-based charter service operating 31 franchises in North America. Pilots have been notified vacations may be canceled and the company planned to expand its call-center.

"For business travelers, time is of the essence. Laptops are essential, and these regulations are just strangling them," Woolsey said.

Banning those devices would be worse for airlines than long security lines, said Robert Mann, an airline industry consultant based in Port Washington, N.Y.

"For business travelers in particular it's kind of a Charlton Heston-type of moment," he said, referring to the former head of the National Rifle Association. "You can take my laptop or my Blackberry or my PDA -- out of my cold dead hands."

Back in Denver, Fender said he was fearing something even worse in his future: determined terrorists who react as fast as new rules are put in place.

"I think they would devise a means of defeating security, and eventually people won't be able to take any planes," he said, eyeing the line and noting the chaos even a failed plot could bring. "I got here and saw this line and started to think, 'Oh, man.'"

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Associated Press writers Catherine Tsai in Denver, Mark Jewell in Boston, Josh Freed in Minneapolis and Jessica M. Pasko in Albany, N.Y., contributed to this report.