Let s look at the Internet. It s now dawning on people that you can t simply start with the Net and work backwards. It just doesn t work. New technology by itself does not a business make. But, as you all know, e-commerce is huge for the airlines.
Travel is the number one product sold over the Net.
We re filling tens of thousands of seats that would otherwise fly empty, and shaving hundreds of millions of dollars from our distribution costs. Technology is at the heart of our focus on both the revenue and cost sides of the ledger. We need, and intend, to work to offset those increases by developing new ways to use technology to lower costs and increase the productivity of our people. While the technology leadership we re striving for encompasses far more than the Internet, the seamless connectivity of the world wide web is a nice model for the role our industry plays with the second major phenomenon impacting us all, globalization. Our role in the globalization process is similar to the role played by companies like Cisco and Sun Microsystems in facilitating the growth of e-commerce.