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Passengers Are Cleared to Network About the Cabin By SHARON MCDONNELLSEPT. 14, 2004 Continue reading the main storyShare This Page Share Tweet Email More Save On a flight to speak to the New York Power Authority in upstate New York, Gilda Carle was writing an article about how to progress in networking from "eye-olog" -- a word she coined to denote eye contact -- to dialogue, then monologue. "The man sitting next to me said, 'What's eye-olog?"' recalled Ms. Carle, a communications consultant in Yonkers and a television therapist known as Dr. Gilda. "I thought, 'How dare he look over my shoulder like that?' But we started chatting." The man, the president of a diaper manufacturer in Montreal, gave her his business card. One week later, she sent an article about the diaper business to him with a note. She also added his name to her newsletter, and they kept in sporadic touch. Five years later, Ms. Carle received a call from the executive's sales manager, inviting her to be the keynote speaker at the company's international sales conference at a handsome fee. As the tray tables go up, and everyday responsibilities recede as far as the cities thousands of feet below, the guard often goes down. Many business travelers report that they have landed clients and forged partnerships thanks to chance encounters on airplanes and in airports, sometimes with serendipitously better results than the meetings or shows they were to attend. Continue reading the main story ADVERTISEMENT Consider Andrew Zolli, the founder of Z+ Partners, a forecasting firm in New York, who met Dr. Sally K. Stansfield, an associate director of global-health strategies for the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in the first-class lounge of Swissair last year. Mr. Zolli was checking his e-mail in a cubicle when he began chatting with Dr. Stansfield. He immediately invited her to be a speaker at Pop! Tech, an annual conference on the social impact of technology that he produces in Camden, Me. She spoke last fall. Why the sudden decision? "At work you're bombarded, and I'm constantly approached by people who want to speak," he said. "When traveling, the things that make up your identity disappear and you have these chance interactions with people without your barriers up." While business travelers are more likely to bump into decision makers in the first-class cabin, they can also find opportunity in coach class. Sixteen years ago, Winthrop D. Chamberlin, a founder of Trufresh, a seafood sales and processing firm, was on a flight to Boston to market a fast-fish-freezing patent to seafood suppliers. Squeezed into the last row in coach of a shuttle from New York, he discovered that his seatmate was an investment banker who bought and sold food companies. She gave him her card, they later met in New York and she referred him and his partner in Trufresh, Barnet Liberman, to a board member of the R.J. Peacock Canning Company, which runs a salmon farm and a processing company. The partners -- who also own a real estate management firm and invest in restaurants -- then flew to Maine and signed a contract with Peacock, a company that they continue to use. "You talk more to people in first-class, but you're surprised more in coach," said Judith King, an owner of Andy Morris Company, a public relations agency in New York. "People are less jaded." Her own reward came after she was bumped from first class on a flight from San Francisco two years ago and ended up sitting next to Melissa Wagoner, a sales manager for a necktie company and the wife of a chief executive of Ellula Inc., a maker of inflatable speakers for laptop computers and portable digital-music players. Ms. Wagoner, who had also been bumped, soon was deep in conversation with Ms. King. "We literally talked for five-and-a-half hours," Ms. King said. She followed up and arranged a meeting with her new friend's husband, Bill Wagoner. She soon had Ellula as a new client. Some travelers have employed an in-your-face networking style with happy results. David Ewing, then a junior analyst at R.B. Webber & Company, was flying to Orlando, Fla., to attend a wireless-telecommunications trade show when he impulsively shouted to his fellow passengers on the uncrowded flight, "Who here got stuck going to PCS98?" A man across the aisle said, "I did," and they spent the flight talking. "It turns out he was an executive with one of the companies I needed to research," Mr. Ewing said. "I got a ton of data, got introduced to his whole staff later, and invited to their parties. The information I brought back made a reputation for me in the firm as a 'whatever it takes' kind of guy." Since that coup, Mr. Ewing, who is now president of San Francisco Consulting Group, a marketing consulting firm, has been known to use bait to reel in promising prospects. On a recent flight to Detroit, the man next to him in coach looked like a chief executive, said Mr. Ewing, who left a copy of a business book he had brought with him on the seat as he got up. The man asked if it was a useful book, and before you can say networking Mr. Ewing offered a laptop demonstration on the plane about pricing and the software tools his firm creates to help companies achieve a good financial return oninvestments. His seatmate, the chief executive of a Silicon Valley hardware firm, was impressed, Mr. Ewing said, and the two men have since scheduled a meeting. Other road warriors take a more understated approach. Andrea Nierenberg, the founder of the Nierenberg Group, a corporate training firm in New York, waited until her airplane was descending into Las Vegas before asking her seatmate in first class about her plans in the area, then continued the chat with her as they made their way to the baggage area. She figured it was a smarter ploy than trying to engage the woman in conversation right away and risk annoying her. "There are all kinds of unwritten rules in first class, and people are always working, anyway," said Ms. Nierenberg, the author of "Nonstop Networking: How to Improve Your Life, Luck and Career," who has also made business contacts while stuck in an elevator and waiting to get into the restroom. Her patience paid off; her seatmate, a meeting planner, later hired her to give a speech at a conference for a financial firm client and do team-building for another finance client. Sometimes serendipity strikes, pure and simple. Ted Levine, the chairman of Development Counsellors International, a economic-development and tourism marketing firm in New York tells the story of how he flew to Barbados in 1961 in hopes of landing a contract but wound up with Trinidad and Tobago. His meetings on Barbados had fallen through, so he went to Trinidad and Tobago for the weekend to see the sights. Sitting in Trinidad's Piarco International Airport and waiting for his luggage, he started a conversation with David Weintraub, who was the chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago Industrial Development Corporation. The two kept in touch, and, after the islands gained their independence the next year, the country became his client for more than 10 years. Of course, blabbing to strangers can be risky. Ash R. Huzenlaub, the chief executive of the Emergisoft Corporation in Arlington, Tex., which automates emergency health care records, says he frequently spots loose-lipped competitors on flights to trade shows, often just a row or two a way. "They talk loudly about their products and pending deals, either on their cellphone as the plane taxis or is at the gate, or to colleagues with them," Mr. Huzenlaub said. "These experiences taught me the value of keeping my mouth shut and keeping my laptop facing the window." Still, Mr. Huzenlaub, who is 28, is not dogmatic about steering clear from high-altitude deal-making. "A stewardess keeps trying to set me up with her daughter," he said. The TimesMachine article viewer is included with your New York Times subscription. We are continually improving the quality of our text archives. Please send feedback, error reports, and suggestions to archive_feedback@nytimes.com.