I’d like to introduce you to perhaps the best new business travel blog in the universe. Called The Middle Seat Terminal, it comes from the words of one of the best ever journalist to cover the topic, Scott McCartney who pens the weekly The Middle Seat column for The Wall Street Journal and his new trusty sidekick, Journal reporter Matt Phillips. When reading the tag-team approach to the topic, it works as well if not better than Batman and Robin and even the early Siskel and Ebert days before they became the recent Ebert and Roeper (infamous movie review duo’s).

The new blog tagline states that it “unpacks” news for travelers and it does that, in a style new to what you may stereotype The Wall Street Journal for. For instance, I doubt that you’d find the following two stories in the Journal: Bad Trips: Man Tries to Open Door at 35,000 Feet and Someone Built a Concorde Out of Legos. But it hasn’t gone all Hollywood, it retains a sincere baseline of stories such as Why Buy Airline Stocks? and Which Airlines Could Face a Cash Pinch in 2009?.

As well, it uses and unpacks news from other media sources, all with insight and a light touch of humor. In referring to a story in The Kansas City Star, it says this, “Here’s the link to the KC Star’s story, although - fair warning - a really annoying ad launches over the story.” Would The Wall Street Journal really warn you about an annoying ad in their analysis of the news of travel? Here they do and I love the differing writing style of both writers to the blog.

Trust me, you’ll still find the best of analysis of the normal Middle Seat column combined with the levity of blogging. And interestingly enough, I found in it’s early days so far, a story with two slightly different recaps. For instance in today’s newspaper column, How US Airways Vaulted to First Place, it examines how US Airways made changes to soar in their on-time performance. In the blog, it looks at the same topic though expands it to comparing the change to that of a football coach with the right playbook, the right equipment, the right facilities, the right people in the right places. And the blog analysis is more on the leadership it requires for a turnaround, ala Continental and Delta, than on the process of the change, ala the newspaper column. I love this “rest of the news…” type approach and find the combination of news and comment to be perfect.

On the blog’s initial launch – nothing could be more perfect and with the suggestion it become a must read for you is that the blog is entirely free to read, not bundled in the pay-per-view that some sections of the online version the The Wall Street Journal has.

http://blogs.wsj.com/middleseat/

I recently read that The European Parliament, concerned that many airlines are misleading passengers and that people end up paying a lot more for travel because of the extra fees that travelers haven’t been made properly aware of, agreed to ban airlines from marketing fares that do not include the taxes and surcharges that these travelers have to pay. While the airlines have until the end of the year to get in line with this change, it does seem like the U.S. in it’s dodgy approach to fair pricing of products like air travel again continues to slip behind in any leadership to this growing problem. We as travelers are getting a bit fed up with this practice and all we’ve ever asked for is “what will this trip cost us to travel?” Seems reasonable wouldn’t you say? But unfortunately it continues to fall on deaf ears in Congress.It takes more than one person to say, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take this anymore…” 

ExpressJet Airlines is suspending its service as of September 2, blaming high fuel costs. ExpressJet is the latest airline to suffer from higher costs of fuel, though likely it also had competition woes as well.This means that JetSet members better get going to redeem any awards they may have earned and plan to use them prior to the September 2nd date. While it seems the airline will continue to fly as a Continental Express partner, I don’t see anything coming our way to convert those credits into OnePass miles - such is the hard reality of competition these days. This airline has done something that no other did - actually provide a warning to potential and current passengers and in this case, members of their frequent flyer program. Of the past five frequent flyer collapses, all were without warningand all members completely lost their inventory of  miles, points and credits. How can ugly get uglier? Looks like we’re going to find out. Makes that fuel surcharge on award tickets a little less important today. Yes, I’ve got credits in the JetSet program and now need to figure out - do I try and fly them more to reach the next award level or just cut my potential losses? Interesting challenge …