2002 From the archive


Back in February 2002 we asked: if you pay peanuts for “cut-price” carriers, do you then get monkeys?


106


OUR COVER STORY discussed the rise of “cut-price” carriers, particularly for business travel. Alex McWhirter wrote that the numbers of corporate customers using no-frills airlines had doubled in a year, with Easyjet, Go and Ryanair all reporting profits and increased customers, while “British Airways is struggling and Swissair, Olympic and TAP face an uncertain future.” Eurostar was pitted against the airlines


in another feature, where Business Traveller journalists went to the French capital using a range of transport methods, including flying from Stansted with Buzz. The winning option was the Air France flight from London City airport to Charles de Gaulle; not only the fastest method, but also much cheaper than first class on Eurostar. Our news pages reported that national


currencies were being phased out in the Eurozone, with many countries moving to only accepting the Euro for payment. Germany was ditching the Deutsche Mark, Netherlands losing the Guilder, and the Republic of Ireland dropped the Irish Pound. In Italy and France, meanwhile, the majority of shoppers continued to use their local currencies. In the UK, of course, we still do – a situation unlikely to change. BT


National currencies were being phased out in the Eurozone


SEP T E M B ER 2 0 18 HIGHL IGHTS Done roaming A feature was devoted to the exorbitant


charges for using a mobile to make calls from abroad. Yet it wasn’t until 2017 that members of the European Parliament successfully


forced phone companies to charge the same (low) prices anywhere in Europe.


Smart phone?


A CD-ROM was fastened to an advert inside the issue to tempt readers to explore the


Nokia 9210 Communicator, a state-of-the- art mobile phone with a novel QWERTY


keyboard that could send and receive faxes. Airport security


Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport was trialling iris recognition to improve security and


speed up border checks; the Privium system still operates today. In contrast the UK’s iris scanning scheme, piloted at Heathrow in 2004, was abandoned in 2013.


Navigating the web


Online search engines were still rudimentary. “There are useful travel portals on the internet. It’s just finding them that’s


the problem,” summarised one pundit at “Wonders of the Web” travel seminar.


bus ine s s tr a v el ler .c om


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