Now is not a good time to be in the airline industry. First, the cost of jet fuel has been steadily increasing because of soaring oil prices There there were the FAA audits that led Southwest, American Airlines, Delta, and United Airlines to ground a number of their flights. Now a slew of bankruptcies among smaller flyers has the whole industry on edge. Wired news reports that big airlines are responding to the bankruptcies by spinning out a string of “new fees, fare increases, fuel-surcharge hikes and travel restrictions” all targeted at business customers.

In general airlines seem to be hoping that business customers will get them through the hard times. Stiff competition has made it difficult to raise standard rates fast enough to deal with the rising cost of fuel. And it’s not secret that the coporate world supplies some of the airline industry most loyal, and most importantly, inflexible customers. But if you happen to be a part of the business sector you don’t have to let airlines bleed you to death with new fares. Cost concious business are going to want to look for ways to cut down travel costs.

Right now true teleprescence offerings from big companies like Cisco and HP are probably outside of the cost range for most companies. John Chambers from No Jitter points out that in addition to the upwards of $500K price tag for a teleprescence system, you’ll probably also have to spend another serious chunk of change on upgrading your network. But short of teleprescence, there are alot of distance collaboration tools that might help you keep in touch with far off colleagues and partners without having to step aboard a plane. Remote desktop technology paired with phone conferencing abilities is great for simple realtime interaction. Other companies like IBM have started making use of virtual worlds like Second Life to do long distance collaboration.

Of course there are some things that you can’t do without being face to face. For situations that require building trust and relationships there’s still nothing like an in person touch. And for analysts trying to understand a client’s business, there’s no replacement for seeing it with your own eyes. But for lots of purely practical matters and for people working remotely on internal projects, long distance collaboration tools might save businesses a bundle.

Updated: Looks like we aren’t the only worried about the cost of air travel for businesses. Melanie Turek of Enterprise 2.0 weighs in on air travel’s downward spiral.

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