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Working the world at home

Interested in flying to London, Beijing or Seattle? Airline reservation agents, such as Marla Rothstein of Wesley Chapel, can help you plan your trip to exotic locales — all from the comfort of their homes.

By STEVE HUETTEL, Road Life
Published September 19, 2007

Continental Airlines reservationist Marla Rothstein helps a customer book a flight. Rothstein works from an office in her home in Wesley Chapel.
	[Stephen J. Coddington | Times]

ADVERTISEMENT [Stephen J. Coddington | Times] Rothstein is among a new breed of reservationists who do not commute to a regional call center, but instead work from home. Rothstein works from her home in Wesley Chapel.

Dial up Continental Airlines to book a flight and you might end up talking to Marla Rothstein, shoeless and sans makeup, in one of the thousands of beige stucco houses in Pasco County's Meadow Pointe development.

That's a good thing. Good for Marla, good for Continental and good for you, too.

Airlines can struggle to find and keep good agents. Pay usually starts around $9 an hour. Taking call after call from sometimes abusive customers grates on even the sunniest personalities.

A few carriers now offer an inexpensive perk perhaps as alluring as the free travel privileges: the choice to work at home instead of commuting to a cavernous call center.

Continental started a year ago with 46 employees in Houston. Now 800 agents nationwide, more than 200 in the Tampa Bay area, answer customer calls from home. That's one in five of Continental's U.S. agents.

Delta Air Lines is running a test with 50 home agents in Atlanta. American Airlines has 700 among its workforce of more than 5,000 reservations agents. The airline now only hires people willing to work on their own.

"We've found a way to tap into people who wouldn't come in to work," says spokesman Tim Smith.

The concept isn't new. JetBlue Airways founder David Neeleman started enlisting stay-at-home moms to take reservations when he ran Morris Air in Salt Lake City 25 years ago.

Since selling its first ticket in 1999, JetBlue has never operated a traditional reservations center. All 1,200 agents still work in residences around Salt Lake City, Neeleman's home town.

Rothstein, 55 and a grandmother of two, was happy working at Continental's reservations center at Tampa International Airport while she lived a 15-minute drive away in Town 'N Country. But when her husband sold his telecom equipment business and they moved 30 miles north to Meadow Pointe, the commute became a nightmare.

She'd leave at 7, then at 6:30 in the morning, to miss rush hour and make work by 9. Her shift ended at 5 p.m, as cars clogged Interstate 275 for the trip home. "I'd leave in the dark and come home in the dark," she says.

Rothstein was the first to sign up when Continental asked for volunteers to do the job from home. She already had an office with a PC and broadband service. Continental required a second phone line to connect to the reservations data system.

Employees with kids at home, barking dogs or squawking parrots must be able to turn off the noise. American requires that an adult or responsible child oversee younger kids during an agent's shift.

That wasn't a problem for the Rothsteins, a pair of empty nesters. They adjusted the doorbell from a double ring to a single. He bought her an ergonomically-correct chair and a remote control so she could turn the ceiling fan on and off without getting up.

The switch to working at home brought unexpected fringe benefits. Her car insurance dropped $100. Marla doesn't get sick as much without the exposure to co-workers and their keyboards agents in Tampa shared work stations.

Continental likes the deal, too. When a storm forces flight delays or cancellations - and calls to the airline suddenly spike - supervisors can enlist at-home agents to work an hour or two instead of calling agents back to the reservations center for a longer shift.

So, what's in this for you?

Unlike some competitors, Continental and American hire agents only in the United States to take calls from American customers instead of off-shoring the work to India, the Philippines or Latin America.

Frequent fliers dread the language, cultural and geographic obstacles to booking a trip with an agent overseas. If airlines can find more Marla Rothsteins to answer calls, maybe they won't go looking in Bangalore or Mexico City.

We can only hope.

Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

[Last modified September 18, 2007, 22:40:09]