meet the new lap-top road warriors

THEY CALL THE REST OF US `DUMMIES' BECAUSE WE WORK IN TERRESTRIAL BUILDINGS. `ROAD WARRIORS' ARE A NEW BREED OF SUPER TRAVELLERS, RULING THE WORLD FROM `VIRTUAL OFFICES' IN THE AIR

YOU'VE SEEN them - they hide behind the blue nylon curtains that divides two worlds. They get linen napkins and stainless steel cutlery while you get paper and plastic.They get a glass of champagne on the ground while you are arguing with whoever is sitting in the seat you booked. If you have ever scuttled off on a star-spotting trip to first class, you will have seen them sipping mineral water and staring at their computer screens - the new breed of cybernauts, the road warriors.

Since traders began travelling the Himalayan spice routes, businesspeople have been on the move, but never has it been less fun. Now, the hotel receptionist may know you better than your children, and you may never do your own laundry - but there will be no more freebie weekends with the mistress, because in the age of technology you take a "virtual office" with you. As more and more corporations eschew offices for "plug-in centres" , there is no longer any need for the employee to have a fixed base. He or she can travel the world to meetings and conferences with a virtual office as hand-luggage.

Road warriors (the term has been coined by the travel industry) spend a minimum of 100 days a year away from home. They are the top 500,000 of the 25 million worldwide who are counted as "frequent fliers", and they are gold dust to those who cater for them. Hotel and airline lounges now have touch-down centres where warriors can use the lightweight technology they carry with them. Calling the rest of us "dummies" (desk-bound users of many machines), road warriors never let their laptops, modems, mobile phones, pagers or Psion 3A organisers out of their sight. They have been able to make calls from the air itself since 1984, but soon, using the satellite equipment, they will also be able to receive calls, send and receive faxes, plug in their modems, and have interactive multi-channel entertainment at their disposal.

So how often do these people really fly? Fred Finn, a sales executive, from Guildford, Surrey, has flown the equivalent of 15 return trips to the Moon - including a startling 700 journeys to New York by Concorde. Beth Barry, planning director of the advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather, takes at least one foreign trip a week and is a regular on transatlantic crossings. "I take the morning Concorde flight if I have to. I do tend to wonder where I am and what I'm doing, but it is amazingly quick. The best thing about it is that they take your coat in the lounge before you board and give it back to you when you leave the terminal in New York. I always hope I might get a nicer one but I always seem to get my own," says Ms Barry. Rather unassumingly, she has no seat preference (unlike the Princess of Wales, who insists on 1B, and Joan Collins, who asks for 12D).

A staggering one-fifth of travellers on the daily Concorde BA001 flight to New York at 10.30am will be back in London by the end of the day. Some of them don't even leave the airport on arrival, but hold their meetings in the conference facilities at JFK.

"I always mean to work on the flight," says Beth Barry, "but I never get round to it.You see the men pretending, though. I think it's pretentious to say it's awful travelling all the time, because, of course, it's fine compared to working down a mine. I alleviate the stress by smoking."

Stress is the chief concern of Stephanie Moore, director of Stress Matters, whose firm offers counselling, anti-stress massage and advice to executives. She says that the human hormone and immune systems are upset by constant flying, which makes people tired and less able to perform. "This often means they push themselves even harder trying to recover. That can easily end in physical and/ or mental breakdown." Ms Moore's company sees hundreds of people a week suffering from stress caused by constant work and travel. "Their relationships suffer terribly, because if you are stressed your sex drive is right down, your temper is short and you are too intolerant to sit down and talk to your family. There is a huge incidence of divorce among my clients," she says.

Mandy Pooler, 36, also at Ogilvy & Mather, is both a road warrior and mother of five-year-old twins. Armed with her laptop, she is mostly confined to Europe, but does the New York run about four times a year. She tries to combat stress by sleeping during the flight. "The first class sleeper trip back is hilarious," she says. "I am nearly always the only woman, and there are these old businessmen padding about in British Airways pyjamas with their cups of cocoa.You lie down three inches away from some man you have never met before. I feel too vulnerable to sleep well".

Steve Mills, a local partner/ manager for a software company, flies to Europe, Africa or the Middle East once a week. "I always take a Toshiba T4800CT and a modem, so I can send faxes or link straight into our internal system back in England," he says. He has two children and tries to keep his nights away to a minimum, which often means he flies to Europe and back in a day. "I try not to miss the wedding anniversary. I hate working on planes." Mr Mills has 15,000 air miles clocked up at the moment, all donated by British Airways, but he is not happy. "Frankly the stewardesses are all too old. And the advertisements for wider seats in business class seemed to precede the actuality by about six months."

Road warriors can be hard to please. "It's incredible what you turn into when you travel all the time," says a 24-year-old senior analyst with a strategy consultancy firm who travels to Europe at least once a week. "You are so spoilt that you start to get obsessed by the fact that there is no bathrobe in your room or how many air miles you're earning. People are hugely competitive about it." He says that "the No 1 hotel relaxation requirement for my colleagues is a gym. Me, I just drink more."

Most five-star hotels now accommodate road warriors on separate executive floors with computer hookups and "networking" lounges. A networking area is essential, because the warrior with no home base may rarely have an opportunity to make human contact with anyone but the vitally important clients whom he travels to see. Technologally speaking, it would be possible to conduct a business without ever meeting anyone, but there are clients who just would not be happy without the personal touch.

Brave-hearted road warriors deny they deserve any sympathy at all. "International travel is wonderful," cries Jon Fowler, an international marketing manager for Sony. Armed only with his Psion 3A, he flies once a week to Europe and once a month to America. "I think it's conceited to be blase - I feel lucky to see other places. I'm just flexing my muscles and concentrating on a career - at my age I don't need an outside life." Mr Fowler is 32.

Others have completely resigned themselves to a future where everyone works from home or plane, with their offices under their arms, and have learned to adapt. Dermot McNulty, who works for a large PR company, positively enjoys himself in the air. He carries a laptop, a dictating machine and a CD player. "I just tune the world out," he says. "The world can't get to you and you experience that great rarity of being left alone for five hours at a time. I'm very happy up there."