Author: View from the Wing

I don't write very much about booking travel with Priceline. I don't like dealing with Expedia on changes and when things go wrong. But for simple bookings that most travelers might make, is Priceline actually worse?

Airports started out close to the city center but the need to expand for more travel and bigger jets, combined with NIMBYism of local residents, pushed airports out to the exurbs. Entire cities built up around the commerce of the destination airport, from shopping to dining in newly planned communities. The aerotropolis was born. But far from the futuristic vision of perfection, there's a darker side.

American Airlines has fantastic inflight wifi on most of its planes, but there's a portion of its fleet that lacks internet entirely and there are many planes where it's unusable. There was a time when this made sense for technical reasons, because the flights these planes served were usually short, and because passengers weren't as reliant on what's become such a basic service.