Callers to New CEO Dial Up Sex Hotline Tue Apr 29, 9:35 AM ET Add Oddly Enough – Reuters to My Yahoo!

CHICAGO (Reuters) – American Airlines employees that used to dial 1-800-AA-CARTY to hear a message from their CEO may be in for a big surprise now that Gerard Arpey has taken over.

1-800-AA-ARPEY currently leads callers to a sex hotline.

So what will the world’s largest airline do to relay information to employees?

“We obviously will not use that number,” said American spokeswoman Tara Baten.

American employees had grown accustomed to dialing in to the hotline to hear occasional messages and words of encouragement from Don Carty, the former head of their company. Their colleagues at other airlines have similar CEO hotlines.

Baten said American is still reviewing whether it will continue to have a hotline at all. The airline also sends a daily e-mail to employees and has a monthly employee newsletter that appears on the company’s internal Web site.

“I’m sure that Mr. Arpey wants to ensure that American has the best employee communications programs and processes available,” Baten said.

It is unlikely, though, that Arpey’s communication with employees will be as colorful as the “fantasy talk” that the sex hotline promises.

October 27, 2002 By SAUL HANSELL

IT was, someone in the room said, “a Don Corleone moment.” The room was in the New York office of the Boston Consulting Group, to which top Microsoft executives had been summoned in November 1999.

The offer, made by executives of four big airlines, was this: They would give Microsoft’s online travel agency, Expedia, access to their discounted “Web fares” and, in return, get half of Expedia. And the threat: If Microsoft refused, the airlines would announce their own travel site the next day, which happened to be the day of Expedia’s initial public offering.

Microsoft, unaccustomed to being on the receiving end of threats, refused. So on the morning of Expedia’s offering, the airlines said they would start a rival service, ultimately known as Orbitz.

The code name for the venture was T2, which the travel industry took to mean Travelocity Terminator. The airlines wanted protection against the rising power of Expedia and Travelocity, another online agency. They also saw Orbitz as a way to force down the costs of reservations systems, like Travelocity’s owner, the Sabre Group. And, of course, they wanted to make a mint by taking Orbitz public.

Three years later, the airlines have been able to use Orbitz as a blunt instrument to make sure the savings from the Internet – which is used for booking 20 percent of air travel – accrues to their benefit, not the other travel agents. But Orbitz has also compounded the beleaguered airline industry’s biggest problem: falling revenue. By disseminating their Web fares so widely on Orbitz, the airlines have created another way to ratchet fares even lower when they can least afford it. Indeed, some carriers have called a halt to Web discounts, threatening to undercut Orbitz’s biggest selling point.

“Orbitz accelerates the difficulties that the airlines have with the Internet” because it provides such complete pricing information, said Jamie N. Baker, an airline analyst at J. P. Morgan. He estimates that Internet sales by Orbitz and others have saved airlines $3 billion a year, but he says reduced fares, especially for business travelers, cost airlines even more. What is worse, he said, the pressure will continue if the economy revives and war threats abate.

ORBITZ’S owners – American, United, Delta, Northwest and Continental – have had to postpone their dreams of profit from taking it public and instead keep funding its losses. Indeed, there is a growing opinion in the industry that in trying to fortify Orbitz, the airlines made a Faustian bargain: Orbitz would charge the airlines unusually low fees, and the airlines promised to let Orbitz sell every discount fare they offered to the public, through any other travel agent or on the airlines’ own sites.

In theory, that is great for travelers, who can click on Orbitz and see nearly every discount fare. Orbitz was also to be a major disadvantage to other travel agents, both online and traditional. Agents, in fact, have lobbied extensively – but so far unsuccessfully – to have that deal declared an antitrust violation.

It is not so clear, however, that airlines benefit from having all their fares in one place. Like any retailer, airlines advertise sales. But they also try to move unsold seats through the equivalent of outlet malls: charter companies, cruise lines and, more recently, promotions on their Web sites. Their deal with Orbitz essentially forces every liquidation into the front window on Main Street.

“The airlines are shooting themselves in the foot,” said Edward P. Gilligan, president of American Express Global Corporate Services.

Web fares are so low that more business travelers want them, even with the fares’ restrictions. The airlines “are cutting their fares by 50 or 60 percent to save 2 percent in distribution costs,” Mr. Gilligan said.

A few airlines are pulling back from Web fares. Last March, America West lowered business fares and ended most deep discounting on the Internet. Last week, US Airways agreed to give travel agents who use the Sabre systems all the fares it makes available on Orbitz. In return, Sabre agreed to cut the fees it charges the airline by 10 percent.

“We were fooling ourselves to think we could put this product here and it wouldn’t affect prices there,” said B. Ben Baldanza, senior vice president for marketing at US Airways. “It’s gotten to the point where the outlet store has taken over the retail store.”

If other airlines adopt this approach, it could mean the end of Web-only discount fares.

“How can you have a Web fare if travel agents sell it over the phone?” asked Terrell B. Jones, former chief executive of Travelocity. “Whatever incentive there was to create incremental traffic or to shift people to using the Web will be gone.”

In the last 18 months, average domestic fares have fallen 27 percent, to a 20-year low, according to the Air Transport Association. Indeed, fares have fallen more than the economic slowdown would predict: for two decades, industry revenue has been roughly 0.9 percent of the gross domestic product each year. So far this year, it is 0.8 percent.

The airlines readily agree that falling fares are largely responsible for their woes. But the wounds, they contend, are not self-inflicted. Web discounts, they say, were never as big and widespread as travelers had thought, and the savings that Orbitz is helping them achieve more than outweigh the discounts it propagates.

“Orbitz has turned out to be very successful from our point of view,” said Gregory T. Taylor, a senior vice president of United Airlines. “Has it made it more difficult to have a fare that is slightly higher than the marketplace? The answer to that is yes. Maybe we could have charged a few dollars more in the past to people who appreciated our value. But I’m not sure the airlines had any choice about participating in the Internet. And by having a distribution channel that is really low cost, it puts competitive pressure on the other channels to bring their costs down.”

IN the early 1990’s, the costs of distribution – for agent commissions, reservations systems and telephone agents – represented more than 20 percent of revenue, and airlines were looking for ways to reduce them.

The Internet was their solution. Five years ago, as the airlines were setting up their Web sites, they tried lures for travelers. American Airlines invented Net Saavers – last-minute discount fares, listed on weekly e-mail messages, for weekend travel.

“It was never anticipated, nor did it come to pass, that we sold a lot of tickets through Net Saavers,” said Craig S. Kreeger, American’s vice president for sales. “It engaged people to come to our site and give their e-mail addresses to us.” All the other airlines quickly copied that program.

Then the airlines began introducing broader, Internet-only discounts. Delta, for example, had fare sales in which people who booked on the Web could save 5 or 10 percent.

“Two or three years ago, it made sense to offer people a small nudge to give online buying a try,” said Kevin Connor, Delta’s director of pricing and revenue management.

By last year, the number and size of the Web discounts were growing, with airlines sometimes offering hundreds of dollars off their lowest published fares. The trend accelerated as business travel fell off, and again after Sept. 11.

The growth of Web fares also coincided with the start of Orbitz in June 2001. Some travel experts argue that the airlines expanded their use of Web fares, at least at first, to help attract customers to Orbitz.

The site had other advantages, too, like software that could display far more route and fare options than older online travel agents. Moreover, the one-year delay in starting Orbitz – caused by software problems and an extended review by the Justice and Transportation Departments – created a sense of anticipation.

Once out of the gate, Orbitz became one of the fastest-growing sites in history. In the first six months of this year, it sold $950 million worth of tickets, estimates PhoCusWright, a consulting firm. That gives it a 14 percent share of the online travel agency market. (Expedia has 35 percent and Travelocity has 24 percent.)

So far, Orbitz has not been a financial success. Last year, it lost $103 million on revenue of $38 million. In the first quarter this year, it lost $9 million on revenue of $27 million.

The company filed to sell shares to the public in May, but the offering was delayed because both the Transportation and Justice Departments had resumed investigations into accusations that Orbitz was anticompetitive. The Transportation Department inquiry could be completed as soon as this week.

But even if Orbitz gets a new green light, its offering is not likely to advance while war clouds loom and air travel is depressed.

Over the summer, Orbitz’s owners had to give it a cash infusion of nearly $10 million, on top of the $205 million already contributed, according to a person involved in the financing. For the airlines, which are asking for huge government subsidies, further investment in a controversial Internet venture is politically awkward. But Orbitz found the terms available from private investors unattractive, this person said.

It is also unclear how profitable Orbitz will be if the market rebounds, particularly because the site has agreed to charge the airlines – owners and nonowners alike – fees that decline each year. The fee is now $6 a ticket.

Jeffrey G. Katz, the chief executive of Orbitz, says it is within striking distance of profitability – and that it will prosper because of its low costs and the $5 fee it charges travelers for tickets. It now has such a strong reputation for its fare search technology and customer service, he said, that it could thrive even without exclusive access to discounts. “Ultimately, people will find many of these prices at other places,” he said. “We believe having the most low fares isn’t enough.”

After Orbitz appeared, other online travel sites started demanding Web fares from the airlines, too. “We called up every airline every day, and said: `Can we have the Web fares? Can we have the Web fares? We have to have them,’ ” said Richard N. Barton, the chief executive of Expedia, now controlled by USA Interactive. The Orbitz rivals prevailed after agreeing to cut their fees by several dollars a ticket.

“They created a big bat to beat us over the head with, and it worked,” Mr. Barton said.

American, for example, signed a long-term deal in August to provide Web-only fares to Travelocity, but it then cut off Expedia, which did not agree to cut fees as much.

Expedia even stopped selling Northwest Airlines tickets for three weeks this month because that airline also wanted lower fees. A deal was reached a week ago, and Northwest tickets are back on the site.

THE airlines also hope to use Orbitz to put pressure on what they consider outrageously high fees charged by the reservations systems used by travel agents. But the airlines have little leverage.

The systems are under strict regulations to treat all airlines equally, largely as a result of misdeeds by airlines that set up systems and used them to try to favor their flights. Now the two biggest – Sabre and Galileo – are no longer owned by the airlines, but they can still name their prices. This has allowed the systems to raise prices far faster than their costs and to use the difference to pay subsidies of as much as $2 a flight segment back to travel agents.

“Over the last decade, the average fare at United went up by 14 percent, but the average fee to the reservation systems increased by 350 percent,” Mr. Taylor said. “That is an intolerably high cost.”

Orbitz was set up to help the airlines in two ways. It rebates some fees it receives from the reservations system it uses, Worldspan, reducing its cost for each ticket to $8 from $11. And it has developed technology to bypass the reservations systems entirely and connect directly to the airlines. Orbitz will charge only $4 a ticket for airlines that use that system.

In August, American became the first to use the direct connection, and 10 more airlines have agreed to use it the next year or so. Mr. Katz said the move would save American more than $10 million a year.

Most technology experts say central reservations systems are too useful to be replaced by a patchwork system of direct connections. But the airlines have created enough of a competitive threat to push the reservations systems to propose some alternative financial structures.

The deal struck last week by Sabre and US Airways is significant because Sabre agreed to cut its fees and hold them steady for three years in return for access to all the airline’s special deals. But it preserved the payment to travel agents.

Nowhere have Web fares caused more turmoil than at corporations, where travelers complain that they can find better deals on Orbitz or elsewhere than through their travel agencies.

In-house corporate travel managers “hate Web fares,” said Philip Wolf, president of PhoCusWright. “Their travelers don’t follow policy and book online.” Most companies try to concentrate their business with a few airlines, which offer negotiated discounts, but those deals do not include Web fares.

TRAVEL agents, to reassure clients they are getting the best deals, have started to use so-called Web bots – programs that search Orbitz and the airline sites. Some airlines, like Northwest, invite agents to use their Web sites, figuring that they can avoid the reservations system fees. But American has sued FareChase, a provider of Web bot software, arguing that travel agents should be able to book Web fares only if they agree to its broader proposal that would have agents pay most of the reservations system fees.

Orbitz, meanwhile, reports that 20 to 30 percent of its customers say they are buying tickets for business travel, and it has started its own site to serve small businesses.

Indeed, Orbitz and the other sites have hurt airlines’ ability to keep business fares high. The average business fare is now six times as high as the average leisure fare; the multiple was only three in 1995. That bubble was ready to be popped.

“Business travelers have known for a long time that we charge them more because we provide them services that cost more, then we top off the plane with leisure travelers,” Mr. Taylor of United said. “The Internet has made this more visible.”

Over all, 42 percent of business tickets issued by American Express are now discounted and nonrefundable, up from 25 percent in 2000.

Tight corporate budgets have been a big force, but the Internet is, too. In controlled experiments, American Express found that when travelers book tickets for the same route, those who use its Internet site spend 15 to 20 percent less than those who talk to its own travel agents.

John Berkley, vice president for strategic planning at American Express, said that was because someone might buy the first convenient nonstop when talking to a travel agent but might feel obligated to take a cheaper connecting flight if it is displayed on a screen.

The big airlines have responded to the increased use of discounted, nonrefundable fares by prohibiting travelers from using those tickets to stand by for later flights.

America West took another approach in March by lowering business fares substantially while eliminating Internet discounts. “We used to sell close to 10 percent of our revenue through online discount channels,” said J. Scott Kirby, America West’s executive vice president for sales and marketing. “And on transcontinental routes it got to be that if you really wanted to sell tickets you had to price them at $150 to $200 round trip.”

The business fare on those same routes was $2,300, and the lowest published fare was about $300. Now the business round trip is $800 and the Internet discounts are gone. Revenue per seat mile at America West, which does not have a big base of business travelers, has fallen less than at the other carriers.

“When we first started using the Internet, we were able to shift market share, but now every airline is doing it,” Mr. Kirby said. “We decided this is a game that leads to inexorably lower prices.”†

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/27/business/yourmoney/ 27ORBI.html?ex36755597&ei=1&en\0d758824e43a6e

———–

-Ian.

—- http://edwardjayepstein.com/nether_fictoid9.htm

Fictoid #9: Plastic Knives and Box Cutters

Following the September 11th attack, government authorities declared that the weapons used to hijack the planes that crashed into World Trade Center were plastic knives and box cutters. The story about plastic knives and box cutters, implements which passengers then were not legally restricted from bring through security checkpoints at airports, was relentlessly drummed into the public’s mind by two of the highest officials in the government. John Ashcroft, the attorney general, Donald Rumsfeld, the Secretary of Defense.

Ashcroft told ABC News on September 15th that “investigators believed that each of the commandeered planes had been hijacked by groups of three to six men armed with box cutters and plastic knives.” Donald Rumsfeld told Fox News on September 16th, that the hijackers used weapons that are distinctively different – – plastic knives.” On October 9th, he suggested to Dan Rather on CBS News “plastic knives and the use of a U.S. airliner filled with American people as a missile [were used] to destroy a World Trade Center.” On November 7th, he described to Jim Lehrer on PBS ” One of our planes is used as a missile to fly into our building and into the World Trade Center. It was beyond one’s imagination that plastic knives and our own commercial aircraft filled with our own people would be used as the implement of war.”

Actually, it was their imagination, not established facts, that informed the world that the hijackers had used plastic knives and box cutters to commandeer the two airliners that had destroyed the twin towers of the World Trade Center. Not a scintilla of evidence had been found then— or to date— that either plastic knives or box cutters were used by any of the ten hijackers who crashed United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 into the World Trade Center. No box cutters or plastic knives were found in the debris. Nor were the cockpit voice recorders ever found from Flight 11 and Flight 175. No witnesses, either passengers or crew members, on either flight 11 or flight 175 ever reported any hijacker having a box cutter or a plastic knife. Both United Airlines flight 175 and American Airlines Flight 11 had departed from Boston. Once both Boeing 767s had reached their cruising altitudes, the hijackers took control of them by unknown means without any of the four pilots warning the ground controllers, even though they had open radios. Both airliners then turned off their transponders and disappeared from the computerized radar screens.

No message was ever received from flight 175 that mentioned any weapons. So, for all anyone knows, the hijackers may have used guns, grenades, poison gas or any other weapon

An executive summary of an unpublished FAA memo stated:

“At approximately 9:18 am, it was reported that two crew members in the cockpit were stabbed. The flight then descended with no communications from the flight crew members. The American Airlines FAA Principal Security Inspector (PFI) was notified by Suzanne Clark of American airlines Corporate Headquarters that an on board flight attendant contacted American Airlines Operation Center and informed that a passenger located in seat 10B shot and killed a passenger in 9B at 9:20 am. The passenger killed was Daniel Lewin shot by Satam al-Suqama. One bullet was reported to have been fired.”

The information came from two cell phone calls made by flight attendants, Betty Ong and Madeline Amy Sweeney, to Americal Airlines ground controllers. Ong, who was in the first class compartment— and the only witness to the assault on the cockpit. She reported that she had seen four hijackers come from first-class seats, kill a passenger seated behind them, and use a chemical weapon which she described as “some sort of spray” that made her eyes burn and made it difficult for her to breathe.” Madeline Amy Sweeney, the flight attendant in the rear compartment, call was not recorded. According to the ground controller, she said that the pilots, another flight attendant and a passenger had been stabbed or killed.

The FAA subsequently said that the report of a gun shot was an error proceeding from a “miscommunication”. The ground controller did not recall a gun shot or a bullet being mentioned.

In any case, there were no box cutters or plastics knives on flight 11 were used.

Two other flights were hijacked that morning, American Airlines flight 77, a Boeing 757 departing from Virginia, and United Airlines Flight 93, a Boeing 757 departing from Newark. On flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon, one single passenger, Barbara Olsen, reported on weapons that some of the five hijackers had in the back of the plane. She told her husband, Theodore Olsen, on a cell phone that the hijackers who herded her and other the passengers into the back of the plane had two kind of weapons: knives and cardboard cutters (presumably box cutters). She did not say anything about the other hijackers in the cockpit and she apparently did not even know that they were piloting the plane. Nor did any other passenger or crew member on Flight 77 describe the hijackers’ weapons. It cannot be assumed that all the hijackers on the plane had similar weapons. The hijackers assaulting the cockpit might have needed more sophisticated weaponry to rapidly stun or kill the pilots.

On flight 93, the Boeing 757 which crashed near Pittsburgh, the flight attendant reported over a cell phone that a hijacker in her plane had a “bomb strapped on.” Some unidentified person also said over the loud speaker that there was a “bomb” aboard the plane. A passenger, Todd Beamer, talked over a cell phone about the “terrorist with a bomb.” Another passenger, Tom Burnett, told his wife over a cell phone that he had heard that a pilot had been “knifed.” No passenger or crew member described either box cutters or plastic knives as weapons and, as far as is known, no box cutters of plastic knives been recovered from the wreckage.

Similar weapons thus were not reported in the different flights. A paralytic chemical spray was described in the front compartment of flight 11, knives and card cutters was described in the rear compartment of Flight 77 and a bomb was described on flight 93. Nor is there any reason to assume that different hijackers on different planes leaving from different airports would use the same weaponry. Atta and Alomari, for example, having made a detour to Portland, might have obtained weapons unavailable to the hijackers in Virginia and New Jersey.)

In any case, the Ashcroft’s story that the hijackers used box-cutters and plastic knives in the attack on the World Trade Center is a functional fictoid. In this case, the function was diversion. This fictoid serves to divert public attentions from the responsibility, and legal liability, of the government and airlines to prevent major weapons— such as guns, bombs, chemical sprays and hunting knives from being carried aboard airplanes. If such illegal devices had been smuggled aboard the planes, the liability could amount to billions of dollars. If, , on the other hand, it could be disseminated that the hijackers had only used plastic knives, such as those provided by the airlines for meals, or box cutters, which were allowed on planes, neither the airlines, the screeners at the airport, or the FAA, which regulates the safety of airports, could be held legally responsible. Paul Pillar, who had headed the CIA’s counter-terrorism, could thus explain that”the attack that killed almost 4,000 people used box cutters.” This press accepted it as established fact. The New York Times, for example, reported “the hijackers did not use firearms, which would probably have been detected, but apparently wielded box-cutter knives of the type that were then allowed on board but are now banned.”

What made the box cutter and and plastic knives fictoid particularly welcome was that the FAA had found massive failures of airport screeners to find weapons prior to the attacks. Such tests were conducted by FAA undercover “Red Teams.” In 1998, for example, one FAA Read team leader told the New York Times, “we were successful in getting major weapons— guns and bombs–aboard planes at least 85 percent the time.” The failure rate was as high as 97 percent at some airports. Nor was this vulnerability corrected before September 11th. FAA Special Agent Bogdan Dzakovic, according to USA TODAY, said that FAA officials had ignored security problems before the terrorist attacks.

The fictoid successfully deflected from this gaping hole in security.

———–

Friday July 6 3:48 PM ET

Southwest Pulls Listings From Orbitz Site

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Low-fare carrier Southwest Airlines Co. (NYSE:LUV – news) said on Friday it had launched a new salvo in its battle with the Orbitz travel Web site by cutting off its flight listings from the rival-owned service.

Southwest pulled its flight information from the industry clearinghouse that supplies Orbitz because, “We do not want to be associated with a site that eliminates independent alternatives for the consumer,” company spokeswoman Ginger Hardage said.

“We just don’t feel comfortable with our five largest competitors providing information about our company,” Hardage said. “We felt everything Orbitz was doing was misrepresenting the true picture of Southwest Airlines.”

Orbitz was founded by UAL Corp.’s (NYSE:UAL – news) United Airlines, AMR Corp.’s (NYSE:AMR – news) American Airlines, Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE:DAL – news), Continental Airlines Inc. (NYSE:CAL – news) and Northwest Airlines Corp. (NasdaqNM:NWAC – news). At least 25 other airlines have agreed to join as affiliates.

The move means that Southwest flight information will no longer be available through the Airline Ticket Publishing Co., an industrywide clearinghouse that provides data to travel agents around the United States.

Instead, Hardage said, Southwest will make its listings available through the computer reservation system of Sabre Holdings Corp. (NYSE:TSG – news). Sabre already has a business alliance with Southwest.

Hardage said the absence of Southwest means that Orbitz can not claim that it offers the lowest fares.

“Without Southwest Airlines, Orbitz is a collection of five of the largest high-fare airlines,” Hardage said. “Any claim of being the lowest fares is certainly not the case.”

The decision also will deprive Southwest of some ticket sales outlets because Sabre is available through some, but not all U.S. travel agents. However, another Southwest official predicted the company will “find a way to do business with other agents.”

Orbitz spokeswoman Carol Jouzitis said Southwest’s decision will have little impact on the travel site, since Orbitz wasn’t getting paid for booking Southwest flights.

“The result of this is that consumers will now find it a whole heck of a lot harder to compare Southwest fares with those of other airlines,” Jouzaitis said.

“Is Southwest afraid of having its fares compared to those of other airlines?” Jouzaitis asked.

Jouzaitis also contended that the absence of Southwest flights does not invalidate Orbitz’s claim “that we have the most low fares on the Internet.”

Southwest and other critics, including travel agents and competing Internet travel sites, have charged that Orbitz will reduce competition and cut them out of selling certain low fares.

Orbitz says airline participants must offer the site their lowest Internet fares but competition is preserved as the same airlines are free to sell those fares through their own Web sites or third parties.

Southwest fired its first shot against Orbitz in May when it filed a lawsuit alleging unauthorized and misleading use of Southwest scheduling and fares. It accused the travel site of making “misleading, untrue, and harmful representations with respect to Southwest’s service, schedules, and fares.”

In its lawsuit, Southwest charged Orbitz with falsely promising the lowest publicly available fares when it failed to include many of Southwest’s lowest fares that could be found on the Southwest Web site.

Southwest is asking for an injunction preventing Orbitz from displaying erroneous Southwest information and seeks unspecified damages.

Hardage said the company will continue to press its case to ”assure” that its flights remain off Orbitz.

Although the plan had aroused antitrust suspicions among regulators and travel industry competitors, DOT concluded earlier this year it had no evidence to justify halting Orbitz’s launch and said the venture could spur online travel site competition.

Southwest, which has prospered with its all-coach service, amusing in-flight announcements and a schedule that avoids getting bogged down in the hub-and-spoke routes of its bigger rivals, wants nothing to do with Orbitz.

-Ian.

— TURBULENCE (WRLD 8:35 am) http://www.wired.com/news/news/email/explode-infobeat/story/22088.html

Business class passengers on an American Airlines flight from Dallas to Manchester, England saw more than a movie Saturday when two cocktail-fueled execs stripped naked and, well, got down to business. To the dismay of the flight crew, David Machin, 40, and Amanda Holt, 36, were, as one British tabloid gleefully reported, “engulfed with lust … Nothing and no one could have stopped them.” The couple was arrested and charged with, among other things, outraging public decency. Of course, Amanda, who works for Nortel Networks, can claim she was just following her company’s advice. Nortel’s advertising slogan — cue the Beatles — is “come together.” . . . . . . .