Flying the Social Networking Skies

Who’s going to be on your flight? Till now, this was a question you probably didn’t bother to ask yourself. But a new social networking site, www.skylounge.com, may well change that.

The site focuses on business travelers who “do not like leaving anything up to coincidence.” Individuals log on to the site to share information that helps them determine if people they know will be on an upcoming flight with them.

Call it a social flight plan for the business traveler.

Skylounge may prove handy for solution providers and IT company employees headed to a conference or trade show. Flying out of New York, I often at airport gates have run into people headed for the same event that I am attending. If they happened to be Skylounge members, I might have known in advance they would be on my flight. That is, if I were a member myself, the merits of becoming so I still have to weigh.

You see, as much as I like my IT channel friends, I really enjoy having that two or three hours of flying time to myself, to catch up on some music with my noise-canceling headphones, enjoy a good novel or just sleep. And of course, if I fly JetBlue, which I seem to do most of the time, I can even watch the news live on satellite TV.

Now, I may well qualify as antisocial, but not as much as the friend who sent me this e-mail when I told him about Skylounge: “Dude, I don’t want to even know the person sitting next to me on a plane. I put my headphones on and stick the plug in my pocket just so people won’t even try to talk to me.”

But Skylounge isn’t limited to finding out who might be flying with you. Say you’re going to an Ingram Micro conference or attending the Microsoft partner event, you can log on to the site to get information about local attractions, hotels and restaurants. Well, at least that’s the goal. Keep in mind the site is fairly new.

“You can also see who you went to school with or who lives in your area,” says Skylounge founder Marcel van Gemerden. “Why do you have to feel like it’s your first day on the job every time you fly? Know your team before departure and stay in touch. Car pooling, site seeing, dinners, etc. The possibilities are endless.”

Skylounge already has 23 separate lounges, including unofficial company-specific lounges for GE, Shell and American Airlines. For business travelers attached at the hip to their golf bag, there is the “Golf Connection Lounge”

“This lounge connects golfers from all over the world and allows them to challenge other members for 18 holes and maybe even a drink at the 19th,” said van Gemerden.

What could be better?

Or does this site promote togetherness a tad too much? Maybe my friend was right. Now, where did I put those headphones?