I have a question for anybody out there who might know. Who do you think is responsible for the following scenario:

You arrive at Kennedy Airport from Los Angeles at 11:42 PM after a 6-hour flight, only a few minutes later than your posted arrival time. You would have been earlier than that, but the usual nonsense over New York City required the usual half hour of circling before your plane was permitted to land.

You then sit on the tarmac for fifteen minutes in the middle of Queens somewhere while somebody someplace figures out where to stash your plane. The aircraft then taxis to the gate at the gigantic, sprawling new American Airlines terminal… and taxis and taxis and taxis. You are in effect driving across half of Queens. You stop several times and the plane just sits there, thinking. It is now nearly midnight.

Finally, almost half an hour after you have landed, you arrive near the gate. The Captain makes an announcement to the effect that you have stopped short of your destination by the length of a football field because there are a lot of aircraft in the way of your gate. He seems befuddled by this, but the reasons why are unclear because this is not the first nor even the second time this has happened, at least the stopping short part. After another ten or fifteen minutes, the plane rolls to the gangway… and just sits there. The doors do not open. Nobody is there to let you off the plane.

Finally, more than 30 minutes since touch-down, the door opens and lets you off… at the farthest end of the massive terminal. Anyone who has been there knows the length of the walk to the exit. There are many gates closer to the front doors, but we’re not there. We’re about half a mile away, literally. It’s particularly hard on the old people and the drunks in Business Class.

So I have some questions. As one of the great cities of the world, why does New York have such a lousy airport? Or am I annoyed at the wrong people? It is American Airlines? The Port Authority? Some independent outsourced contractor? Doesn’t somebody at the airport know that a six-hour flight full of tired people is arriving? Are they surprised when it appears? In a tizzy? At a loss for what to do? Why does it take 30 minutes to berth an airplane? Why does it have to be at the far end of the terminal when there are dozens of closer gates? Is New York Kennedy the only airport where nobody is around to let you off the airplane? Anybody out there know?

When is enough of a good thing way too much? When you’re flying American (AMR). Somewhere along the line somebody must have done a focus group or something, because it’s apparent that the airline believes that fulsome, frank communications with passengers is of fabulous benefit to everybody. The effort is obviously well-intentioned. But the outcome is perhaps not.

I first noticed this a few years ago, when I would be sitting and waiting for a mysterious amount of time on the tarmac and then Chuck Yeager would come on the public address system with something like, “First of all, I’d like to thank you all for your patience…” This immediately drained whatever patience I was trying to cultivate. I hate being thanked for my patience. “… but there’s an amber light here in the cockpit that we’re checking out.”

That was bad. There are a lot of reasons for amber lights, none of them particularly encouraging. Did I need to know about the amber light? Maybe. Did I want to fly in a plane that sported one, even briefly? Again, not too sure. I did know that the announcement did very little to help my frame of mind, but I guess they were just trying to be responsible and blah blah blah.

The trend has continued to develop, with ever-increasing levels of frankness being employed to win our admiration and regard. Which is fine. Unless, you know, it freaks us out entirely.

It’s my perception, which may be completely off base (but I don’t think so) that American Airlines hasn’t put a new plane into domestic service in quite some time.  A little while back, they fooled me for a while with some new seating arrangements, but then I realized the snazzy new electric chairs had been installed into the same old Boeings. What American does instead, and it is very much to its credit, is to swarm over every airplane before it is permitted to leave the ground, fixing, checking, making sure that it is truly airworthy. This means a lot of late departures and safe arrivals. Still, I sometimes think they should post all take-off and landing times with a big fat asterisk.

Anyhow, yesterday I was scheduled to depart at 1:50 from San Francisco. The plane was slow to board. It is my belief, based on years of experience, that even the most infinitesimal delay at any point in the chain usually results in hours and hours of snafus and fubars, very often ending in the scrubbing of the flight and total decomposition of my day/week.  So my hair-trigger gut was telling me a) we had a problem and b) there was, therefore, a 68.4% chance that we would never take off at all, when Chuck Yeager came on the intercom.

“Well,” he said, “we were all ready to go, but it appears that the brakes on the left side of the plane need to be replaced.” He then went on about how that was really not a very big deal at all and that it might take less than half an hour and so on and so forth, but I didn’t hear a thing, all I could get into my mind was the image of a plane landing at Kennedy Airport in New York and careening into Jamaica Bay when its brakes gave out.

“This is too much information for me,” I said to the dead-heading flight attendant in the next seat.

“Well,” he said, “I guess they’re just trying to be honest.”

I get that. Honesty is a virtue. In this case, however, something seems out of whack. Next time I would suggest something like, “There’s a bit of weather in New York, and we’re going to make sure that we have clear skies for your landing there. Kick back and have a free drink on us.”

I like that much better. Not that such obfuscation is always called for. How different the world would look now if some honest broker had announced, “Well, we were doing fine until about a month ago, when it became obvious that our insurance was underwritten by a host of bad mortgage loans…”

I just logged my two millionth mile. I hasten to add that the vast majority of those miles I paid for myself. I say this because some of you think I ride around in luxury all the time with the corporate teat between my teeth. I assure you I do not. I am, for better or worse, insanely bi-coastal, with one half of my existence on the left coast and the other, on the right, necessary to pay for the whole deal. Hence my millions — not bucks but miles. 

The crazy size of my achievement comes with some benefits. Primarily, it has boosted me to Executive Platinum status on American Airlines. This confers access to the first-tier lounge at most airports. This is why I am writing you right now from the British Airways First Class Lounge at Heathrow Airport. It is among the nicest spaces — public, semi-public or private — I have ever been privileged to be in. 

There are coffee machines dispensing all sorts of cool stuff, and teas, of course, and an assemblage of the bizarre things that British people like to eat, all very nice. Fruit and baked goods and jams and meats and porridge and warm bubbly drinks, even top-shelf booze if you’re in the mood at this hour of the morning. Many residents are on their laptops, working. Business never ceases. 

The news here this morning is that the British banks are reaping the benefits of new, lower interest rates, which were slashed 1.5 percent recently… and not passing the savings along to their customers. Shocking, wot? 

In a little while, we move on to Rome. We’ll see how good the free wi-fi is from there.

Word comes from Megan in Chicago, one of our most valued and assiduous correspondents, that this humble blog has been blocked by the IT police of her company. Megan writes:

I can tell you one thing that is going the wrong way. Bing’s Blog page has been officially blocked at work with a code of “Social Networking”… Stanley baby – can you pull a few strings and help the numb nuts in IT understand that I need this site in my daily work life? How can I possibly put in a full 10 hours without a spoonful of delicious irony! I’ve explained that this is a very useful site which quite often covers business related topics. I’ve stated my case that while the site is not essential to doing my job, it does help me do my job better. They’ve claimed that they will review and let me know – *sigh*. I’ll miss you sweetheart…

I’ll miss you, too, Megan! It’s all so unfair! A social network? Us? Could that be? Every day we have as serious a discussion of current business-related events as the facts warrant! Sure, a lot of the time we focus on the ridiculous and outrageous, but that’s a direct effect of the times in which we live, right? Just look at the following issues we’ve dealt with in recent months:

• Guys who play golf and bridge while their city-states are flailing, and are then super-compensated upon their departure;
• The collapse of huge banking institutions that stupidly gave loans to people who couldn’t repay them when belts tightened even one teeny notch;
• The most aggressive Fed in living memory, moving dynamically to do who knows what?;
• Utter confusion on the part of experts and pundits of all stripes, and a general sense of incapacity and weirdness from all over;
• The usual insanity pertaining to mergers, acqusitions, divestitures and other organizational hooey in organizations from Apple and AOL to Yahoo and whatever companies that start with the letter Z you can think of;
• Intense activity in the digital arena, including the geometric growth of online retail while brick and mortar stumbled;
• The worst performance by the airlines industry since Howard Hughes attempted to commercialize the Spruce Goose;
• Other (your peeve here).

We’ve covered these terrific business trends and stories just like a responsible information source should, with aplomb, sagacity and no little amount of sang froid. We’ve also looked extensively at your bulls**t jobs and crazy bosses, and even occasionally offered some advice in our Ask Bing sector. And if, in so doing, we have also attracted a witty, savvy, saucy, snazzy, slightly snarky group that get together with some regularity to comment on the general situation? Does that make us a social network worthy of blockage? Well! All I can say is…

Thanks for the promotion, IT dudes! Now come on! Free the blog! Lift the blockade! Let freedom ring!

Do you guys think I’m stupid? When I have problems with a company that has me at its mercy, in which I trust my life, do you suppose I don’t know who is really responsible? Like, if I walk the streets of a city and find them covered with garbage, do you think I blame the men whose responsibility it is to clean as hard as they can from day to night? Don’t you think I know there are too few of them to get the job done?

And if I fly an airplane that has been worked like an old donkey for the past 10 years, do you think I blame the pilots and mechanics for the fact that it throws a warning light every time it lands? What do you take me for? Seriously.

There were two kinds of comments to yesterday’s post that really set me off. The first came from the geniuses who told me I should walk from New York to California. I’m a cordial guy, so I’ll just say that I find those comments to be… what… insincere? I know what you’re saying. You’re telling me to, you know, have extremely personal relations with myself. Believe me, when I’m sitting on the floor of the airport sucking carpet waiting for the next time some guy thanks me for my patience, I wish I could. Because I can’t? I’ll just say… back atcha.

The second are those who think I’m blaming flight attendants, cleaning crews, pilots, gate agents, for the pain that the airlines inflict on we, the prisoners of Zenda. Believe me, I don’t. I know who is to blame. It starts with Ronald Reagan and we can go on from there. But no, I don’t think the working crew is responsible for anything except, at times, a really nasty attitude that you also see in my comments.

If I had to deal with the wretched refuse of our teeming shores every day, I’m not sure I would be any sunnier. I don’t know, however, that I would sport a pin that said “I don’t care what your name is either.” I’m sure the flight attendant had a good reason to wear it. But still.

A particularly hurtful but truthful comment came from Glenn in San Francisco. Here it is. I don’t want anybody to lose it in the shuffle, like a piece of luggage headed for Barbados that was intended for Peru.

As a 20 year flight attendant with AA who used to work flight 18 (the red eye from SFO to JFK) on a regular basis, I understand your continued frustration with American’s many shortcomings. In fact, according to DOT statistics, AA 18 arrives in New York on time (within 15 minutes of scheduled arrival time) less than 40% of the time — totally unacceptable. What your whining tirade fails to acknowledge, however, is that most of your complaints stem from AA cutting costs to stay afloat, without declaring bankruptcy, to satisfy the flying public’s desire for cheap(er) fares while costs beyond the airline’s control are at all-time highs. But what I find truly staggering is your lack of comprehension at what this cost cutting has done to the front line employees at AA. In addition to the mere pay cuts, vacation and sick time cuts, nasty changes in work rules and an overall demoralizing work environment, these cuts have impacted many employees in profound ways.

I do not expect you to feel sorry for me, but I spent my first ten years at AA working my ass off to save for my first house (I found a tear-down in my home town) and then next five years designing and building my new home (while still working my ass off to pay for it — no predatory/sub-prime loans for me – I had a 30 year fixed at 5.75%!). Three-quarters of the way through construction, we took our 35% plus pay cuts and while my payments would have been easily manageable prior to the “restructuring agreement” at AA, I now had to struggle to make the my payments. Ultimately, selling the home I spent 15 years of my life saving for and working on was the only option (additionally, due to the beginning of the real estate downturn, I didn’t even make a profit). I am now back to being a renter with an uncertain future. So please forgive me if I don’t exactly ooze with sympathy at how AA’s cost cutting has so negatively impacted your life — boo hoo.

The real kicker for me, though, is the irony that although the front line employees have suffered (as have our passengers), our senior management has been rewarded handsomely with bonuses in the hundreds of millions of dollars — a scenario that your employer, Fortune magazine, most certainly lauds. It is clear from the last decade or more that big business is primarily about massive personal wealth for it’s “corporate kings.” They don’t care about you – as customer, and they don’t care about me – as employee. They have enormous egos to feed and Hummers to fill up and that’s all that really matters to them. You should really have a better understanding of that.

I do, I hope. Anyhow, Glenn is pretty eloquent if I do not.

Here’s what I think: we all work for organizations. Our organizations work within a system. The system is bigger than we are, but it doesn’t absolve us from personal responsibility. That’s why I love people like Bobbi in Dallas, who made American Airlines (AMR) look so good in spite of all the indignities to which she may have been subjected by her situation, whatever that might be.

And that’s why I don’t like the gate agent in San Francisco, the guy who didn’t allow the pregnant woman, toting a stroller and a tiny baby in a Snuggly, to pre-board one night last spring. Sure, he had his reasons. We each have our reasons. We all live within the belly of our own particular beast. How human we are within that confine is up to each of us.

And, of course, how much any of us might want to do, or is willing to do, to change the system.  I’m open to any suggestion. As long as I don’t have to walk.

Lord knows I complain enough about things. Maybe we all do, but I’m a master at it. I complain about American Airlines (AMR) all the time, since I am their prisoner half a dozen times a month, if you count a round trip as two trips, which it is. It’s possible that it should count as three in certain cases, like last night.

For some reason, they have a hard time with the redeye at San Francisco airport. The “equipment” comes in from New York late, of course, God forbid they should actually have a plane on the ground ready and waiting for people to board, no, they have to use those poor mothers incessantly until their wings fall off, I guess. So the plane comes in and it seems like, you know, a complete surprise to the airline that it needs to be cleaned before it’s boarded again. I’ve taken the 10:30 PM several times and each time there’s a total fire drill as the grouchy American gate agent runs around looking for a phantom cleaning crew. Last night, he thanked us for our patience no fewer than four times. I don’t know about you, but as soon as somebody thanks me for my patience I lose mine.

Anyhow, last night the situation seems to have been that on the incoming flight a service dog had befouled the aircraft and somebody needed to clean up the mess. Nobody appeared willing to do so. They all ran around like maniacs for about half an hour, which made us just late enough into NY Kennedy that we hit the guts of rush hour and it took me 75 minutes to get the ten or so miles into Manhattan. So here’s a note to American:

Hello, American Airlines. Pleased be advised. Every Sunday night at 10:30 PM, a redeye flight leaves from San Francisco Airport. The equipment that is utilized for this regularly-scheduled flight comes in at about 9:30 or perhaps 10:00 PM, depending on weather and other considerations, including the fact that it comes from Kennedy Airport in New York, the worst airport in North America. When this equipment arrives, it will need to be serviced, re-catered and prepared for boarding. In advance knowledge of this, you might have a cleaning and catering crew on hand as a matter of course, rather than not. Thank you for our patience.

There. That felt pretty good.

But I don’t want you to think I only report the aggravations and incomprehensible shortfalls. So I will tell you the story of Bobbi at Washington Reagan Airport. She works for American Airlines, too.

Bobbi is an agent at that airport, which is a very nice one, by the way, quite new and sort of spiffy all over. Last Friday, I had to make a connection — Washington to Dallas, Dallas to SFO. The day before, it had snowed a little in Dallas, which threw the entire system into a tizzy. They can rope a steer down there and shoot a hunting buddy at 600 yards, but they can’t deal with a couple of inches of snow.

Be that as it may, the airport was a nightmare. People had been waiting 48 hours to board their flights, confusion reigned supreme, the food stands were out of food, there was no place to sit. As a business traveler, I can join the premium club for my main airline. It’s really no big deal. They don’t have butlers there or anything. For a few hundred dollars a year, you can have a place to sit, wireless internet, a working cash bar, coffee, a few magazines. It’s nice. I appreciate it.

Mostly, I appreciate the agents there. After a while, you get to know them and vice versa. On the day in question, I was very nervous that I wouldn’t make my Dallas to SFO connection and would not, therefore, get home at all until the next day. Something happens to my heart when I think I’m stranded. I lose the will to live.

Everything was delayed. My own flight out of Reagan was supposed to leave 20 minutes late, but naturally the plane itself, coming in from “snowbound” Dallas, was somewhere over Kentucky. Nobody really knew when it would actually leave. That’s the new thing in the last few years. Planes don’t run on a schedule. Airports are like hospital clinics. Once you’re into the system, you wait. But I couldn’t wait. I knew that if one thing was certain, it was that my connecting flight in Dallas would leave on time… because I probably needed it to be a little late.

Bobbi was behind the desk and went to work on my situation immediately. She noticed there were two Business Class seats in a flight that had been delayed from 11:30 AM. As it happened, a Texas congressman was in the chair next to me. She helped him too. She watched that flight like a hawk. She ascertained that, against all odds, those two seats remained a possibility. She watched her screen. She waited until the exact right minute and then did the absolutely unheard of: calling on some backup assistance from the other beleaguered and valiant colleagues there in the madhouse, she took the congressman and me by the hand and led us to the teeming gate. A few moments later, we were on the plane.

The rain was coming down hard. I never really believe that a plane will take off anymore, not even when its doors are closed and its waiting on the tarmac. But take off we did. And I made my connection. And had a late dinner in San Francisco.

So thank you, Bobbi. Thanks a lot. Thanks to you too, American Airlines. What you take away a lot of the time, you also give.  That’s saying a lot these days, I think.

In 2008 I believe we mark a very special anniversary: the 250th year that American Airlines has been serving the vermicelli and shrimp appetizer to Business Class passengers. But seriously. I know there has only been heavier-than-air flight for less than that, so those of you prepared to fire off a corrective comment can just stop right there.

It does feel like a long time, though. I recall, once upon a time, that American used to feature the food stylings of a number of chefs from establishments around the nation. Today, it’s kind of odd. They hand out menus with lots of type in them, but they always feature the same food. It’s Groundhog Day in the air.

In a time where nothing is certain, where the markets offer a different buffet of doom every day, it should be kind of nice to have something that never changes, never alters, year and year after year after year after… hm? Oh. Sorry. I got stuck in a loop there.

I have some questions for American I thought I would share with you, because perhaps you might have some answers.

Did somebody at the airline, back in the last century, achieve massive economies of scale by purchasing the largest number of teeny weeny beef filets in history? And do they now reside in an enormous frozen vault somewhere, tiers upon tiers of them, reaching up into the sky, a miniscule percentage defrosted annually for use until the next century dawns? How else are we to explain their ubiquity?

Were market tests done to determine that the vast majority of salad eaters enjoy creamy dill dressing? For a bright and shining moment last month, business passengers were offered a modified Caesar heretofore unknown, but that option seems now to have disappeared. Was there an upheaval among frequent flyers to bring back the creamy dill? If so, why hasn’t it been documented?

Who invented the super-cooked shrimp with rice-noodles that seems to be the annointed appetizer on most transcontinental flights? Is there an executive somewhere whose resposibility it is to say, “No. Enough,” and bring in the prosciutto with reconstituted melon dip as an alternative? When was it decided that resilient shrimp and limp, translucent noodles were not only the amuse bouche of choice for most customers, but of such popularity that they would be on the menu for most of our adult lifetimes?

Is the universe divided between those who select beef and those who opt for pasta? Is there no other road through the infinite regions of space?

Are these things immutable? Perhaps not. A few years ago, American introduced soy beans into its hot nuts mixture. Reaction must have been swift and powerful, since they were rescinded almost immediately thereafter. So change is possible. But is it called for?

Is there a vast business populace out there that, as they check in for their 15th or 20th flight of the year, has puffy little thought balloons above their heads filled with cold shrimp and chewy beef filets? Are there routes out there that offer other fare entirely, dishes that those of us who go between New York, Los Angeles or San Francisco know not of?

I know there are more serious matters questions that face us, ladies and gentlemen. This will never be the Davos Question featured by YouTube for response worldwide. But it isn’t only the big stuff that occupies us, is it? Aren’t the little issues sometimes just as intriguing, worrying away at the corners of our consciousness like termites, burrowing like moths into the fabric of our composure?

If you have any answers, please send them along. If any of you now reading this are associated with the airline, feel free to weigh in. And those of you who don’t fly this particular carrier quite as much as I do, are there similar patterns, concentric mobius strips of repetitive service in which you, when you travel, are forced to inhabit?

What other weird things have you eaten in the course of business lately? And yes, readers in Asia, I AM speaking to you.

This being the season of giving, I thought I would share with you a list of things I’d like to get from some of the major vendors in my life. The way I see it, I’ve given them so much during that past year. I don’t think it’s out of line for me to hop up on Santa’s lap and give them some clue of how they could make me happy in this joyeux season.

From American Airlines (AMR), I would like an on time departure from Kennedy Airport sometime in the next twelve months. As part of that, I’d like to have an airplane that does not have some “small problem” that needs remediation by a mechanic before taking off, or a host of puling announcements apologizing, thanking me for my patience, or explaining how our “brief delay” made us “lose our place on line to the flights headed to Europe.” I’d just like to get on the plane, take off and get where I’m going when I expected to, give or take a half hour.

I guess I’ll also ask Santa to bring some new planes for American. They’re trying to make do with what they have, Santa, but new Business Class seating is not actually the same thing as having an actual new plane that doesn’t require constant tinkering because it’s always in the air. I know they know that at American, and it must make them sad to offer the same old airplanes to people year after year after year after year after year.

From Apple (AAPL), I would like my touch-screen Ipod to hook up more easily to the Internet. The commercials show it seamlessly doing so, but I’ve had some problems getting online in places where you need a password, like Starbucks (SBUX). I admit this is a small present, just a stocking-stuffer, really. The gizmo is great. I love it. One with a few more gigs of storage would be nice, too.

From Stan O’Neal and Chuck Prince, late of Merrill (MER) and Citi (C), respectively, I’d like one million dollars. Each of them got enough in their platinum envelope to give away a little. I won’t go into any details with you, but believe me when I say that, like a lot of corporations, my expenses are very high and actually outpace my revenue. While cash flow is good, bottom line EPS for my annual personal report is nugatory. These humongous exit packages for failed executives aggravate me. I would feel better if I got a piece.

From Nintendo (NTDOY), I’d like a few more games? It’s a terrific platform, but XBox has a better lineup, at least for psychotic killers who want to roam free blasting evil mutants. I’m one of those and so are most of my friends.

From the Fed, I’d like a clear reading on whether we’re in recession, depression, inflation, stagflation, ingestion or decompensation, along with continuing decline in interest rates that will re-boot the ailing housing market.

From President Bush, I would like a quiet ‘08. While continuing war is good for some industries, I persist in the conviction that peace is better for the overall economy, and certainly for anything American that seeks to operate in the global environment, including American brands and American corporations.

These are just suggestions. I actually appreciate anything I get. No beef sticks or cheese logs, though. I still have some left over from last year.

Hello. I’m back. I took a plane from London to New York to San Francisco yesterday afternoon after a huge tour of one of our important new product lines and two important meetings, one of them even sober. I landed at 10 AM London time, which was 4 AM New York time, which was 1 AM SF time. So I was wide awake in London, dead asleep in New York and tired as hell in San Francisco. I think I may have slept a bit on at least one of the planes. That Ambien is a wonderful thing.

I was bumped to First from Business on the first leg. I’d like to congratulate American Airlines on its new 777. The compartment I was in was basically the size of my first apartment in Manhattan. And I’m looking forward to my post-flight stint in detox.

I’m glad it’s Friday, and I’m glad I’m back, as nice as London is, and it really is. I took a walk in Hyde Park yesterday morning/evening/night and the leaves were turning all kinds of crispy yellows and reds and browns, and a battalion of guys on horseback in cool uniforms trotted by playing eminently marshall music and it was all pretty perfect. Almost a dream, which could be explicable by the fact that 1/3 of my brain was in a deep coma.

Of course, when I woke up this morning I had 35 email messages and it was only 7 AM here. So I’m going to do that now.

As we begin our weekend, I’m going to keep one of your comments in the forefront of my mind. It comes from Joe from Columbus, Ohio, who writes in with an excellent point. “Didn’t you just write a “sky is falling” column?” he sniped after my upbeat appeal of yesterday morning. “You crack me up.” I laughed when I read that.

You’re right, Joe. I’m exactly the same as the market. Up one day, full of hope and beanery. Down the next, gloom and doom and apocalypse. And badly in need of a mental vacation.

See you all on Monday.

1. Eat. In any good airport, there are many places where you can enjoy a burger, a sandwich, even some decent sushi. Take some time while you eat. If you look around you, you will see many people munching on things while doing sudoku. In fact, if you’re not doing sudoku, it may seem to you that you are the only person not doing so. It’s possible that those of us who are not into non-stop sudoku are missing something. If, for example, I was into sudoku right at this moment, I wouldn’t need to continue this list at all. I could simply stop right here and do sudoku for the next two hours, get on the plane, do sudoku for another six hours, and be home, where I could continue the sudoku game I left behind when I headed out on Friday.
2. Drink. There is no shortage of bars in your average airport. What you drink often depends on what time you are flying, and what time it is at the place to which you are going. When I went to Japan a few years ago, our plane departed at 8:00 AM or so. The lounge was full of Japanese people drinking scotch and smoking. While this seemed unthinkable to me, and I like a good tumbler of scotch as much as the next fellow, it actually was natural to travelers who were returning home to a part of the world where it was then 9:00 o’clock in the evening. Right now, if I chose to be on New York time, I could have a flagon of something strong and brown. Except, you know, I just had waffles.
3. Browse the bookstore. Airport bookstores are fabulous, jammed with all sorts of books, even mine. Those that do NOT have mine in a prominent position, however, need to be instructed to do so. Please refer to the book section of this site to bone up on the books that need to be in the airport bookstore. If they are not there, please go to the person behind the counter and complain. Thanks in advance for your cooperation. After that, you may delve through all the best-sellers, classics and vast trove of business paraphenalia, and then get that new sudoku book you’ve been looking for.
4. Purchase a piece of electronics. My favorite place to waste an expensive half hour is the store that you’re sure to find that’s dedicated to all sorts of cables, charging units, and portable DVD players. Just about every time I get to any airport, I realize I have left my cell phone charger someplace else. The newest gizmo I like is made by Eveready, I think. It’s a little tube where you can put one battery. On the top, there is a tiny input where you may insert a variety of connection cables whose tips fit a host of phones and BlackBerrys. I just realize I left that at home. I’m going to get another one now.
5. Look at magazines. Hi. I’m back. After purchasing a new charging unit (and almost but not quite a $350 portable DVD player), I stopped by the Hudson’s and got Scientific American, Popular Science, Wired, The Economist, and a magazine completely dedicated to sudoku. I’m all set!
6. Fall asleep. Jeez. What time is it? Last thing I remember I was trying to finish a sudoku puzzle in my new magazine.
7. Sit staring blankly into space. It’s very restful here in the waiting area. Look at that guy walking by with a suitcase the size of a steamer trunk. I bet he expects to carry that on. People do that now. It’s so horrendous to check your stuff that everybody expects to be able to stuff these enormous, wall-sized pieces of luggage into the tiny overhead storage bins.
8. Try to get an upgrade. Damn. Nothing yet. I don’t even have an aisle seat. If it doesn’t come through soon, I’m going to have to buy food for the flight.
9. Buy food for the flight. If I were going out of Oakland, I’d go for the stuffed turkey dinner. Do I trust the sushi to be good two hours from now? Should I spring for the wrap on the plane?
10. Find a hot zone, a wall plug and a patch of floor. Got ‘em! Piece of cake! Only 97 minutes to go! Now what to do… hmm… Ah! I know!

Yo, Captain Chenowith of American Airlines. I’m not sure I’m spelling your name right, but here’s to you, Bud. All of us who sat on the ground at Kennedy Airport in NY with you last night for four hours send you a big Whazzup. We like you. We wanted to tell you that because so far all of the communication between you and us has been one way, you to us. This note is to set that right. So here it is:

We know it wasn’t your fault that five seconds after we pulled away from the gate the Port Authority of New York shut down half the runways at Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark for reasons supposedly having to do with weather. If there was some kind of weather, we sure didn’t see it. It was a lovely afternoon and then, after a while, night. But anyhow. You told us what was going on. You asked for our understanding and patience. Usually, when people thank me for my patience I find I immediately don’t have any. But somehow, you really seemed to be asking, so I felt, hey, I’ll live up to Captain Chenowith’s standard. I’ll be calm. I’ll sound like Chuck Yeager. I’ll be cool.

Day morphed into night. The hours went by. Every twenty minutes or so, you told us what was going on. My favorite part was when you admitted that if you asked the control tower for another estimate of departure time, they would get huffy on you and move us to the back of the line. We always knew those flight controllers were like that.

We also liked it when you expressed some slight annoyance, albeit tinged with realism and resignation, that all the international flights were getting off the ground while we were sitting and festering. That didn’t seem fair to us either.

The hours passed like minutes at first, and then like hours, and then like days, and still we sat, and every twenty minutes or so there you were, telling us what was up, not a voice of apology or cold authority either, but a fellow sufferer who wanted to kiss the sky as much as we did.

And then, as the moon rose high over the tarmac, you came on and told us what we suspected might be true… that the Company has a new policy (presumably born in the forge of the Jet Blue debacle) that no group of passengers may be imprisoned in a metal tube for more than four hours. “This is not our decision,” you said, “and it’s not one I necessarily agree with, but there it is.” At that moment, I saw you in my minds eye in your comfy cockpit, yearning to take a hard left, hit the runway and get airborne. But you play by the rules, and so we did too.

As always, it took a dog’s age for the staff at Kennedy to figure out how to get people off the plane, but eventually they did find us a gate. And before we left we heard from you one more time, asking us not to take out our frustration and resentment on the gate staff who would be there to help us. Personally, I was thinking of yelling at somebody in a uniform first chance I got. You pulled me down off that ledge.

There are a lot of people who do their jobs by the book. Many do the technical side and think that’s all they need to do — surgeons come to mind. But dealing with people is often an important part of what we do. And it’s nice to see somebody who does it so well.

Fly safe, Captain. As we wait on the tarmac this morning, rebooked, ready to at last head to our common destination, we say thanks!

We who are about to fly, salute you!

Today we’re going to take a little break from the everyday craziness, crunch and groan of business to celebrate one of the true, pristine moments in the world of global commerce. It won’t take very long, because it’s a very small pleasure.

Here it is: You are sitting in Business Class of American Airlines (AMR). Possibly the seat is even more sweet because you have been upgraded to it. Let’s say it’s on a Friday afternoon, and the work week is done (except for the 200 emails and 15 distressed phone calls that will come over the weekend). You have kicked off your shoes and taken the fifteen minute nap that precedes the Captain’s first unnecessary, blase announcement about altitude, flight time, and the fact that you’re going to pass over Sioux City on your way west. Who cares? That’s all right. No one can call you here. Your BlackBerry is off. And a cart is coming toward you down the aisle.

A flight attendant has appeared at your elbow. What would you like to drink? I believe I’ll have a double Glenlivet, with a splash of soda. It will go very nicely with the little dish of that thing I’ve been waiting for. Anyone who has ever flown up where the seats have footrests knows what I’m talking about. It’s the hot nuts.

Sometimes they are very hot, and that’s not quite right. They get over-nuked and weird. Sometimes they are not hot enough, and baby bear doesn’t like that either. Too crispy and quotidian. But sometimes they are… just… right. And then, well, it’s possible there is nothing more complete, more precisely what it is supposed to be. There are cashews and walnuts and even, I think, the odd hazel nut, too, with a rare, precious shelled pistachio thrown in just to make you feel like royalty. A few years ago, in an effort to save money, they inserted these horrendous, insulting soy beans into the mix. The cries of woe were so great that they removed the offensive offal almost at once. Back came the cashews. World order was restored.

There’s clearly been a lot of corporate thinking behind this entire issue of in-flight snacking:

Hot nuts! Sometimes I take them slow and savor them. Other times I wolf them down and ask for more. That’s a mistake. One bowl is perfect. Two is decadent, and makes you feel like Dennis Kozlowski or something. There are many things you think about before you fly. You think of the hours in the air. You think about how many things you’ll miss while you are away from the world, returning to find innumerable emails that must be ameliorated. But me, most of all, in the hours before I rise up into the silent blue, there is generally one thing on my mind: That little unimpeachable portion of hot nuts, and how I will miss it when I leave this business life and go back into the land of turkey wraps, potato chips, and seats that recline a quarter of an inch.