April Dispatches

April was a Seattle month in my diary. Spring Break took my family and I to the city’s verdant hills and Olympic National Park. And Alaska Airlines’ European debut brought me back, if only for a layover. Planes aside, the region is magical. From jogging on the urban single track in Discovery Park to hiking among the pines in a spring snowfall to Sol Duc Falls or walking under the spring sun along the windswept Pacific coast at Rialto Beach, there is just so much nature on offer. It’s enough to (briefly) forget everything else on in this crazy world.

I recently boarded a United Boeing 767 for a transatlantic flight. The plane wore the airline’s current livery, had all of its latest onboard fittings and, frankly, was everything one could expect on a long-haul flight in 2026. The catch? The 767 was one of four delivered in 1991 during the first Bush administration. More older planes are flying and, at first glance, most travelers won’t even know. (CNN Travel)

Is United’s new economy-row couch, the Relax Row, worth it? Many fliers think yes, with caveats. (The Washington Post)

American Airlines is not merging with United but it is open to new partnerships, including potentially with “fiercely independent” Alaska Airlines. (TPG)

Speaking of American, the airline borrowed more than $1.1 billion as high fuel prices “pressure profitability and delay deleveraging.” (FlightGlobal)

JetBlue’s loss widened in the first quarter as fuel prices rose. But, like every other airline, it is moving the same capacity, fare and cost levers to counter higher costs. (FlightGlobal)

Plus, fuel-related route cuts, Lufthansa shuts CityLine, merger mania chatter, ITA joins Star Alliance, flight cuts at San Francisco, money for air traffic control modernization, American returns to Venezuela, and Alaska’s new long-haul inflight service. (TPG, FlightGlobal, Travel+Leisure)

1:59:30. The marathon as we know it will never be the same again (CITIUS MAG).

NASA’s Artemis II mission was inspiring, even among those unaware, to the millions like myself who never lived to experience a person traveling beyond near Earth orbit (Mark Watney excepted). And those images!

European airlines are, rightly, worried about jet fuel supplies that come from the Gulf. The continent only refines about 70% of its supply and some airports, like London’s Heathrow, import far more than that. Though maybe the risk is waning?

Big moves at IndiGo, India’s largest airline. Willie Walsh, the current director general of IATA, is set to become its new CEO in August.

United is, rightly, upset with how the FAA is slashing flights at Chicago O’Hare this summer.

Passenger rail along Colorado’s Front Range may finally happen. The state has a (tentative) deal with freight railroad BNSF to use the freight railroad’s tracks.

This is a masterclass in debunking the urban legend that rich Georgetown residents blocked a Metro station in the Washington, D.C. neighborhood. One was simply never seriously considered.

“It stings because we failed the streetcar as much as the streetcar failed us. DC was simply not ready to do this … So cheers to the noble DC Streetcar. You taught us that if we want strong transit, we must care enough to actually make transit strong.” A eulogy to the DC Streetcar that shut down after just a decade.

More than two decades ago, the Park Hyatt Tokyo entered the cultural zeitgeist thanks to Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation. A wonderful piece by Chris Dong on the hotel today after recent renovation.

The Atlantic’s Henry Grabar on the “architecture of good behavior.”

I recently discovered the What Went Wrong podcast that delves into how movies, both great and terrible, came together. My instant favorite episode is the one on Back to the Future, a movie that for the many (many) times I watched it growing up, I never knew the arduous road to make it. Michael J. Fox wasn’t even the first cast for the role of Marty!