HOME    E-MAIL JOE    PRINT    SEND MOBILE LINK    2010 COLUMNS    JOE'S ARCHIVES   SEARCH NOBODY ASKED ME, BUT ... By Joe Brancatelli April 29, 2010 -- Nobody asked me, but… Seattle takes coffee a little too seriously. I'm sitting in the Alaska Airlines Board Room at Sea-Tac on Monday and the club attendant announces that anyone who needs espresso should hurry because she is about to take the machine off-line for cleaning. Departure announcements in the club? Not so much. But heaven forfend we don't give you a last call on coffee. Also heard at an airport this week: An announcement alerting passengers to the free WiFi in the terminals so flyers can "connect to the Internet." What else would we use the free WiFi for? To make ourselves an espresso? Nobody asked me, but… Am I the only one whose irony meter went berserk this week when Iceland finally had to close its airports because of the plume of volcanic ash? Keflavik International Airport is north and west of the volcano, so it was open while most of north Europe's airports were closed as the ash wafted east. One casualty of the ash crisis was British Airways' official announcement of its new first-class cabin. But I toured one of the planes equipped with the new cabin while it was stuck at Kennedy Airport in New York. I thought the little sconce that replaces the gooseneck reading lamp was cute. The at-seat wardrobe closet was also a nice touch. And the lie-flat beds work on dials that allow you to set them into exactly the position you wish. There are some details on the new cabin here. Anybody out there still allowed to fly first? Nobody asked me, but… I'm sitting in the Hawaiian Airlines Premier Club in Honolulu on Tuesday while cable-news networks are covering the diversion of the Delta Air Lines flight to Bangor, Maine. Rapt attention was the order of the moment. I'm pretty sure it wasn't because anyone was interested in what Bangor looked like. Not that there is anything wrong with Bangor, Maine. Although I had the worst steak of my life 30 years ago in a restaurant inside what was then a Hilton Hotel. That was the time we landed on a frozen lake about 40 miles from Bangor because the magneto on the Cessna died. I'll stop now … Nobody asked me, but… I'm in Seat 2D on a 7:30 a.m. flight from Newark this week and the flyer in Seat 1C has two Bloody Marys with two mini-bottles of airline-supplied Absolut Vodka. Then she starts pouring from her own flask. Trust me, folks, the breakfast was not that bad. I notice "22 Short Films About Springfield," a seventh-season episode of The Simpsons, is on many in-flight entertainment systems just now. You should watch it. Again and again and again. It's that funny. Weirdly, though, it's largely a takeoff of and homage to Pulp Fiction, not Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould. Nobody asked me, but… The first thing I learned about international business travel when I started writing for Frequent Flyer in 1983 was that the hierarchy was London and Frankfurt. Paris barely rated for frequent flyers. Not too much has changed in the intervening years if your E-mails to me during the volcanic-ash thing are any indication. Most stranded flyers I heard from were in London, followed very closely by Frankfurt, Munich and other places in Germany. That said, the happiest stranded flyers I heard from were in North Italy, where Milan/Malpensa, Pisa and Venice were all closed for flights back to the United States. Every one of the E-mails had some variation of this line: Maybe I'll try to get a flight out of Rome, or maybe I'll just eat and drink some more here and wait it out. Nobody asked me, but… Michael Matthews, our man in the luxury strata of the hotel firmament, is about to launch a series of columns about "bucket list" hotels that he thinks you should visit before you die. I hit one of my own last year: Portmeirion in North Wales, where The Prisoner was filmed. There's only one more on my list: The Taj Lake Palace in Udaipur, India, the hotel in the middle of a lake that was used as a location in both Octopussy and Jewel in the Crown. Meanwhile, back in the real world, I saw a report this week that claimed one in five of the nation's hotels are now in default of their mortgage, in foreclosure or in bankruptcy. Maybe some of them should be converted into assisted-living senior-citizen operations. I'm getting there, believe me… Nobody asked me, but… The once-insanely-great NBC show Chuck jumped the shark this season, but this week's episode had an insanely great last scene where the two truly attractive lead stars finally come together to the strains of Nina Simone's Feeling Good. (The episode is here.) Jazz on TV. What a concept… Speaking of coming together, aren't we all just thrilled at the idea of a United-Continental merger? I mean, there isn't enough Nina Simone--or Coltrane or Monk or Charlie Parker or Irene Kral or Ray Charles or Louie Armstrong--to play during that stinker. Nobody asked me, but… If you want to speculate about a United-Continental merger, here are some stats to consider: Delta is now 21.5 percent of the market, based on revenue passenger miles, which measures size by the total number of miles flown by paying passengers. A UA-CO deal would make the combined airline larger with just over 24 percent of the market. That would almost surely force American (16.4 percent) to do a deal with US Airways (7.6). That would put 70 percent of the market in the hands of three carriers. Which is just fine, really. The more these old-line legacy carriers combine, the faster Southwest and JetBlue grow. It might even be a lifeline for Virgin America, which most travelers love to fly, but seems clueless about finding a path to profitable operation. Nobody asked me, but… The Port Authority, which operates all of New York and New Jersey's major airports, now says LaGuardia is so antiquated that it should be demolished and rebuilt from the ground up. Like that's ever gonna happen … Airport shops around the country are now prominently featuring DVDs of Up in the Air, the Clooney movie about life on the road. Haven't seen it yet. Didn't read the book by Walter Kirn that the movie is based on. Chances that I'll buy it from an airport shop to view it on my laptop during a flight? Zero. 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ABOUT JOE BRANCATELLI 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 started his career as a business journalist and created JoeSentMe 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 the tourist town of Cold Spring. THE FINE PRINT All of the opinions and material in this column are the sole property and responsibility of Joe Brancatelli. This material may not be reproduced in any form without his express written permission. This column is Copyright © 2010 by Joe Brancatelli. JoeSentMe.com is Copyright © 2010 by Joe Brancatelli. All rights reserved.