I had the good fortune to attend the YouTube LIVE events over the weekend. This vaudville-esque circus featured talent ranging from the well known MC Hammer, Mythbusters and members of the 30 Rock cast to more organic superstars like Tay Zonday, Beardyman (a human-beat-box) and the marketing genius who created Will-It-Blend.

As part of the festivities, I had a seat on a Virgin America (my lovely wife works in marketing for VA) charter flight that circled the SF Bay area during the YouTube LIVE show. Using the event, VA launched their inflight WiFi service and used it to beam down a live video feed from the plane to YouTube LIVE. While connected to the web from 30,000 feet, it dawned on me that onboard electrical outlets and internet access are the next variables companies can/should consider in their total-cost analysis of T&E options.

As any of us who travel for business can attest, it’s brutally painful and often relatively unproductive spending time on planes. After all, without an outlet and a connection, you spend maybe an hour or 2 reworking PowerPoints, cleaning up your Inbox (offline of course) and editing Word docs before your power goes down. Sleep, SkyMall or a movie on your iPod is next. Then you get to your destination city, frantically reconnect to the web and play catch-up.

Inefficient days like that add up. So if there’s a way to travel, stay connected and be productive at the same time, it’ll be a no-brainer for most companies. Think of it this way, if you make $70k per year, your “hourly” wage about $35. On a 5 hour cross country flight during a business day, that’s $180 dollars you’re getting paid, yet you’re only putting in maybe $70 worth of work. In the mean time, deadlines, decisions, etc. are either waiting on your return or happening in your absence.

As more airlines modernize their fleets and add these work enabling services, the choice for business travelers will be clear - even if the cost of the ticket or premium service made the flight’s price more expensive. Smart companies will increasingly look at travel (and a host of other categories) from a total-cost perspective. After all, what good is a cheap flight if it costs the company money in lost productivity?

Justin Fogarty is Managing Editor of Supply Excellence. For any questions or feedback on the blog or its contributors, Justin can be reached at jfogarty[at]ariba.com.