Could the latest airline plot be the beginning of the end of the big annual meeting?

That's a question David Gammel asks in this post on ASAE's Acronym blog. He says,

The news this past week has me thinking about what the association world would be like if business travel as we know it ends...If these trends continue and spread, I can see business travel by air drying up significantly. The first things to be cut in that kind of travel-unfriendly environment are often non-essential meetings, which basically defines the association event.

I know, I know, we said similar things after 9/11 and meetings did, eventually, come roaring back. But he makes some good points, the most salient being that associations better pay attention to all this, at the very least. He posits one possible solution, but it sounds less than ideal because it relies on holding regional events with national speakers being beamed in via satellite. But if I wanted that, I'd go to chapter meetings. The point of the national meeting is to see all those folks who you don't see at the local level, right? I don't have any answers, but it sure is a good question to ponder.