Here’s How The C-Suite Stays Ahead

Travelers wait in line at a Delta Airlines counter at Ronald Reagan National Airport (DCA) in Arlington, Virginia, US Photographer: Ting Shen/Bloomberg

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Air travel restrictions and the government shutdown may be over, but the financial damage is still being calculated. The US Travel and Tourism Association estimates the travel economy lost $1 billion per week during the disruption. Airlines have cut hundreds of flights heading into Thanksgiving, the year’s busiest travel period.

For C-suite executives, the 43-day shutdown showed how quickly political dysfunction can derail million-dollar deals dependent on face-to-face meetings. Now with the rollback of Biden-era compensation policies, airlines no longer have to pay cash for wasting your time.

For executives who must show up sharp and on time, hoping the system behaves isn’t a smart strategy. Building your own travel infrastructure is the only way to win. Start with these four companies.

The Smartest Air Travel Hack You’ve Never Heard Of

“Executives and C-suites don’t necessarily know about these services unless their assistants are very into this industry,” Mina Ardoueiazar, chief operating officer at Alpha Priority Worldwide told me over Zoom, as did everyone interviewed for this article. Alpha Priority is a complete travel solution global logistics company for those whose pursuit of luxury includes the pursuit of stress-free air travel.

The company operates in every airport worldwide through an expansive network of vendors and local relationships established over 15 years. CEO Pedro Arias began as a JFK baggage handler, converting the dysfunction he witnessed into a discreet, white-glove service managing the full journey of high profile clients, from front door to final destination and back.

A luxury SUV collects you at home and delivers you directly to an airport greeter waiting to open the Escalade door. Whether you have TSA PreCheck, Clear or none of the above, you’re guided through security in minutes and into your airline lounge, no membership required. Just before boarding is announced, the greeter returns to walk you straight onto the aircraft. “Our responsibility is to make you feel like you’re the VIP when you’re traveling through the airport,” Ardoueiazar added.

On Delta layovers, a new greeter meets you at the aircraft door with a Porsche to drive you to a Delta lounge. Alpha Priority VIPs enter through the lounge’s back entrance to wait in a private section, saving queues for the plebians at the front door. When it’s time to board your next flight, the Porsche returns.

“We’re able to do that service with every other airline,” Ardoueiazar noted, insisting the airport car transfer is available for all airlines, not just Delta. But I wouldn’t have my Delta Medallion status if I wasn’t loyal to the airline on all occasions.

“Internationally, there’s about 16 airports that we offer that service, and you don’t have to be on a Delta flight. You’re able to get that same treatment where you’re sitting on the plane, you get up, you get into a car, a completely private terminal, you avoid the airport at all costs.”

If you’re unfortunately flying American—or worse, suffering Virgin Air like my last UK trip—all the more reason to book with Alpha Priority so you’ll have at least one pleasant experience during your passage. On arrival, another greeter escorts you through customs and baggage claim before handing you off to your next chauffeured car.

“The beginning of your experience is going to put a taste in your mouth that you’re not going to forget, and it’s really going to set the tone for the rest of your trip,” Ardoueiazar underscored. “Whether you’re going for a business meeting, or you’re going to go on stage and perform in front of 60,000 people, these things really add up.”

Solving the Air Travel Productivity Gap

“How do we replicate the experience that you have in your office or your home in another environment, like a coffee shop, on an airplane?” posed Adam Smith, president of Luxor Workspaces.

The modern executive workflow now depends on multiple screens with constant context-switching and zero wasted minutes. Air travel already broke that rhythm, but the shutdown proved how quickly travel chaos can turn productivity loss into business disaster. Executives found themselves working from lounges for hours as cancelled flights cascaded across the system.

“How do I work from my laptop like I work from my home or from my office, with multiple screens, and really not sacrifice, things like power, not sacrifice portability?” Smith continued. Enter the SideTrak^® portable monitor, the “road warrior compromise,” as Smith puts it, a second screen engineered for those who live between gates, hotel desks, and conference rooms.

With a 14-inch display, magnetic attachment, and swivel hinge, the SideTrak Pro turns any laptop into a true dual-monitor setup. Weighing under two pounds, it draws power directly from the laptop using less than ten percent of battery life. Mid-flight, the swivel becomes essential when the passenger in front of you reclines into your already cramped workspace.

“For executives where time is so critical, you’re 25% to 40% more efficient with a secondary screen,” Smith noted. “They shouldn’t have to sacrifice their performance when they’re on the road.”

Engineering Air Travel Sleep When Upgrades Disappear

“Can we bring what we’ve done to the custom sleep pillow and do it for travel?” said Susana Saeliu, CEO and co-founder of Pluto, the custom sleep pillow system claiming global recognition via a Shark Tank debut. “And can we bring what we’ve done to the custom sleep pillow? Let’s do it for the travel pillow, because I’m sick of those U-shaped pillows as well.”

When delays and aircraft swaps downgrade your lie-flat seat upgrade to knees-to-chin cattle class, the prepared executive pulls out the Pluto Pod. Built with the same custom sleep science Pluto uses for its made-to-order pillows, the Pod’s wraparound structure stabilizes cervical alignment to prevent head bobbing, while a hoodie with integrated eye cover blocks cabin chaos.

“You need to be in your own space. You need sensory deprivation,” Saeliu explained, referencing conversations with sleep researchers about what makes travel sleep impossible. “Why can’t people get good sleep on the way to their destination? It’s because you need somewhere to lean against, and that sensory deprivation includes the optional eye mask.”

For complete sensory isolation, the system pairs well with advanced sleep technology like the Manta Sound sleep mask, whose C-shaped eye cups create total darkness as Bluetooth audio replaces the sound of crying babies with Pavarotti. The 20-hour battery life ensures uninterrupted sleep until wheels down.

“The journey should be as enjoyable as the destination,” Saeliu evangelized. “You don’t feel tired when you land. You’re recovered, refreshed, and ready to go. That’s what we designed for.”

Avoiding the Checked-Bag Russian Roulette of Air Travel

While Niklas Oppermann, co-founder of Carl Friedrik, waxed poetic about the “golden era of travel” seen in films like Darjeeling Limited, the shutdown bluntly illustrated that era vanished with the Concorde. Today’s reality is passenger fights for overhead space to avoid the Russian roulette of checking bags and late flights preventing hotel drop-offs, going directly to a first meeting with baggage in tow.

“We take feedback a lot from customers in terms of the types of products to do,” Oppermann added. “‘I want a bigger check-in,’ ‘Your check-in is too small,’ ‘I want a bag that can also hold a suit’—these kind of use case feedbacks is very much what we listen to. Which products to do and how to design them, that’s our job.”

Their carry-ons pair minimalist, contemporary lines with traditional materials engineered for longevity, providing unobtrusive elegance for an executive who must show up at a M&A negotiation directly from a flight.

“The product should be made for the modern person,” he continued. “A modern professional traveler moving about town a lot. There should be something that adds a bit of character, without going into the super traditional briefcase, because that probably is for another generation.”

For maximizing carry-on capacity, compression technology like Ekster TravelPack Vacuum kit condenses a week’s wardrobe into a slim pancake for your Carl Freidrik. And for your one personal item, the sleek Nomatic backpack-to-briefcase design keeps you from looking like a harried airport refugee, carrying your laptop, SideTrak, Pluto Pod and more clothing and shoes while dodging the dreaded gate check.

What CMOs Can Learn from Brands Solving Air Travel’s Pain Points

Alpha Priority’s Ardoueiazar insists, “we don’t do marketing,” while executing one of the sharpest positioning strategies in air travel. Their no-marketing marketing is a deliberate brand signal; you must “know the right people.” Their moat is relationship distribution, focusing exclusively on “mindless” travel, where you don’t think, you just arrive. This gives customers what they value most: time, peace and frictionless experiences.

Luxor skipped asking, “Would you buy a portable monitor?” to instead observe executives suffering through one-screen workflows in public spaces. “You’ve got this great office or home office experience with multiple monitors,” Smith said. “Then you’re out there on the road, and you’re kind of relegated to just one screen.” The company built advantage through behavioral observation and market responsiveness, using nimbleness to quickly address an obvious, but unspoken need.

The Pluto Pod, by design, is the next best physiological substitute for lie-flat sleep when you need to function after a nine-hour flight. By framing rest as arriving “recovered, refreshed, and ready to go,” Saeliu elevated the product from a nice-to-have comfort to a must-have performance tool. The product category went from consumption to outcome: what does using the product enable customers to do next?

Although launched into an oversaturated luggage market, Carl Friedrik avoided research “wisdom” that kills most ideas. “In summary, ignorance is bliss,” Oppermann laughed. “The marketplace is saturated, and you just have to sort of build your way through.” Instead of waiting for a mythical market gap to validate their idea, they shipped, learned, iterated, and refined their positioning as real customers used the product and gave feedback.

Taken together, these brands demonstrate four marketing architectures built for high-friction environments:

• Exclusivity as utility (Alpha Priority): Luxury redefined as friction removal, not status signaling
• Behavioral truth over stated preference (Luxor): Watch what people struggle with, not what they say they want
• Outcome reframing (Pluto): Transform comfort into performance, consumption into capability
• Ship-learn-iterate (Carl Friedrik): Conviction plus customer feedback beats paralysis by analysis

Each company targeted the pain points of inconvenience, frustration, and unpredictability in air travel long before the government shutdown reminded us how fragile travel infrastructure is. For CMOs navigating equally unstable markets, solve the failure points no one else has considered, and your brand becomes indispensable when everything else breaks.