My Financial Times column this week is on the proposed Delta/Northwest merger and why the companies have failed to do enough to restructure in the face of fuel price rises and a possible recession. You can read it here and comment below.

I have just spent a few days in London for work. As always, when I return from New York, it feels richer and more cosmopolitan than the place where I grew up.

One thing that struck me was the nationality of the aircraft passing overhead in west London. When I was a child, I used to gaze up at the aircraft coming in to land at Heathrow and try to identify the countries from which they came.

I remember that there used to be quite a lot of tail fins painted with the blue emblem of PanAm, which is sadly no more. There were quite a few TWA aircraft as well. In those days, a lot of the aircraft - particularly the Boeing 747s – seemed to be flying to or from the US.

This week I did not look up so much but, on the two occasions that I did, the aircraft I saw were painted in the colours of Emirates and Qatar, two Gulf airlines that have been growing rapidly. Heathrow traffic is a fair indicator of global development, it seems.

I was gripped by Pico Iyer’s essay on the enigma of why service on US airlines is so bad compared with that in other US industries. As he pointedly asks:

Why is it, I often wonder, that US carriers have far and away the worst — most surly, inattentive and often snooty — service in the world?

It is a bit of a puzzle but I do not believe his theory that US airlines place the oldest and least enthusiastic attendants on the long-haul flights that he frequents. If that were so, then travelling on domestic US flights would be preferable. It is not.

According to OneSky Jets, a private jet charter company in the US, 15 per cent of its customers say their main reason for chartering a jet is to fly their dog, cat or other pet around.

I have observed before that the twin phenomena of growing dispersion of wealth and sentimentality towards animals is starting to produce bizarre effects. Leona Helmsley, the hotel magnate, left her dog Trouble a $12m trust fund when she died earlier this year.

OneSky does come up with some plausible reasons why people charter jets for their pets. It is very hard to squeeze them into the passenger cabins of commercial flights, the authorities only allow pets to travel in aircraft holds when the outside temperature is not too hot or cold, and there have been a lot of pet deaths in transit.

Still, if the figure is accurate, it says something remarkable, and a bit disturbing, about how much people who can afford it will splash out on their pets. OneSky cites the case of a woman from Chicago who spent $12,000 to fly her two elderly dogs to Maine. That’s a lot of dog biscuits.

There is an intriguing American Airlines advertisement in the New York Times this morning announcing a new "non-stop" service between New York and London. Where might it have stopped?