THE BRANCATELLI FILE FOR 2010WHAT TO KNOW ABOUT JOE Joe Brancatelli is a publication consultant, which means that he helps media companies start, fix and reposition newspapers, magazines and Web sites. He's also the former executive editor of Frequent Flyer and has been a consultant to or columnist for more business-travel and leisure-travel publishing operations than he can remember. He began his career as a business journalist and created JoeSentMe.com in the dark days after 9/11 while he was stranded in a hotel room in San Francisco. He lives on the Hudson River in Cold Spring, New York. July 22: LIFE ON THE ROAD, FROM THE ROAD I'm off on a 400-mile one-way car trip because I just can't handle another airport and another flight. But we can't leave the frequent flyer issues behind. So let's talk about which airlines lose the most checked luggage; the flight attendant who went on a crime spree in business class; the good news about tarmac delays; and a phony new report on "ancillary" revenue at the airlines. July 15: AFTER THE CLOSURE ON LOCKERBIE I wrote "A Funny Kind of Closure" in 2001, when Pan Am 103 bombing "mastermind" Abdel Baset al-Megrahi was convicted. No one cared about him or Lockerbie then. So why are we shocked that al-Megrahi was traded back to Libya for oil and the greater glory of BP? And why is everyone so surprised when the quid pro quo was announced even at the time of the trade? June 24: UP FRONT BARGAINS ARE HARDER TO FIND The gravy train may be over. For the first time in years, there really do seem to be fewer international business-class deals around. Those that remain are higher in price and with more onerous purchase restrictions. Here's what you need to know about how and why you'll have to search harder to fly in style without breaking the bank. June 17: NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT... How much don't you want to talk about business travel this week? Yeah, me, too. Which is why we'll talk about cabbages and kings more than airlines and hotels. So all this week's travel news, plus free snark, as well as thoughts about music, meatballs and more. June 10: THE SPIRIT STRIKE WATCH So Spirit Airlines takes a pilot strike, but doesn't give its passengers any advance notice or the chance to change or cancel their flights. And when Spirit cancels its schedule, it doesn't even give travelers a refund. They give "flight credits" and force you to call an unreachable call center to get the refund. June 3: TRAVEL NEWS FROM A TO Z Leave it to the travel industry to allow me to write about things from A to Z and not find a moment of sanity, a shred of logic or a bit of intelligence. What do you make of United and Continental merging, but not really merging; the Midwest Airlines name disappearing because if reminds people of when travel was better; in-flight Zunes; and al Qaeda's favorite airline? May 27: THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE WATCH IV As the British Airways flight attendants strike drags on, it turns out that BA is unable to communicate completely accurate information to travelers, that it may have sacrificed 1.4 billion pounds of revenue to save 62 million pounds and that the carrier's combative chief executive may be a disposable man in the apparently never-ending battle between an airline and its labor force. May 13: THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE WATCH III For the third time this year, British Airways flight attendants are planning to strike against a package of unilaterally imposed concessions. BA contends it'll be able to fly 70 percent of its passengers through the strike, which begins Tuesday and lasts for five days. Then come three more five-day strikes. We'll have continuing details. May 6: THE MERGER, AS WE SEE IT What's in the United-Continental merger for you? Absolutely nothing. But while the Skygods play their games we've got to look at practicalities: How will the merger affect our frequent flyer miles? What will change with the airlines' vastly divergent in-flight services? How will American Airlines, now suddenly a distant third-place carrier, react? All of the details and some informed speculation. April 29: NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT... When you're on the road all week, you hear lots of strange things in the airport clubs. Plus random thoughts on airline mergers; hard-drinking morning flyers; jazz on television; Bangor, Maine; "bucket list" hotels; the Simpsons on in-flight entertainment systems; and lots of other topics. I throw in the snark at no extra charge. April 22: ASHES TO ASHES IN EUROPE A big volcano in Iceland erupts and most of Europe's airports are closed--and closed for days. And does it make you feel better that John Cleese took a $5,000 cab ride to get where he was going? All of the Pythonese details and information about how to get compensation, too. April 8: WON'T GET FOOLED AGAIN The fools at United Airlines and US Airways are talking merger. Again. The Killer Bs at Spirit Airlines have a lunatic-fringe idea guaranteed to further debase and disrupt the travel experience. Again. A guy smoking in the lav makes a shoe-bomb joke, fighters are scrambled and the right-wing bloggers go batty. Again. Meet the new news. Same as the old news. March 25: THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE WATCH II Okay, let's get ready to do it again. BA survived (after a fashion) a three-day flight attendants strike. Now we have another weekend of disruption coming. I've got the latest details plus all of the attendant politics and name calling. March 18: THE BRITISH AIRWAYS STRIKE WATCH Unilateral concessions imposed on British Airways' flight attendants have brought the carrier to and past the brink of a strike this weekend that may cost it twice as much in losses as it hopes to save from the cuts. Yup, it's just another bit of airline craziness. We've got the details. February 25: NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT... You love the format, I love writing it and we can get though a lot of news--and some snark--with a laugh. So this week, a quick-hit tour through the mindset about airline mergers, the state of hotel check-in, good and bad news about life on the road, and thoughts about Albert Einstein, Tallulah Bankhead, great music for the road, Iran and much more. February 4: NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT... We've reached the dog days of February, which has me wondering why some airlines call its workers "customer-facing" instead of customer service personnel; why I'm having nightmares in French and German; why airport travel patterns are getting odd; why Southwest's traffic continues to grow if passengers have accepted baggage fees; and much more. January 28: WE HAVE ALL BEEN HERE BEFORE I woke up this mornin' to see what condition our condition was in and, to change songs, I realized that we have all been here before. As I look at this week's top stories, I've realized I've covered them all before and nothing has changed. See why airline earnings, Delta's supposed in-flight upgrades, the iPad, the bankruptcy of an off-airport parking firm and even JetBlue's potentially problematic reservation changes this weekend are more of the same old same old. January 21: STUPID SECURITY TRICKS I was going to write about fares this week. Or credit cards. Or any of a dozen things that you've been asking me about in the last few weeks. But here we are talking about airline and airport security once again. Why? Because this insanity is chewing up a lot of our time on the road. January 14: WHEN THINGS WERE LESS ROTTEN I can't pinpoint when life on the road turned rotten, but the events of the last few weeks have certainly confirmed that belief. So I turned to something I wrote back in 1986, about a wonderful flight of fancy that speculated what our lives on the road would be in 2019. Yes, there are middle seats in deep space, but there was still a sense of wonder back then. January 7: GRAND GUIGNOL, SECURITY DIVISION You heard some loon with explosives in his underwear set his privates on fire and you knew it was going to be Grand Guignol all the way. And so it has been. "Great Balls of Fire," as the New York Post offered in a Page One headline. And it gets weirder, with hilariously unconnected dots, missing TSA agents and cameras and a Slovakian "security test" that defies human comprehension. January 3: THE TSA GOES INTO CYA MODE Today's announcement from the Transportation Security Administration that it is implementing new security measures for international flights headed to the United States means the agency has gone into full CYA mode. The announcement is mindless, full of gobbledygook and virtually useless for travelers trying to figure out how to reasonably prepare for a flight to the United States. These columns originally appeared at JoeSentMe.com. Copyright © 1993-2010 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved. |