Mobissimo

Breaking an aviation distance record set 43 years ago by a B-52 bomber, a new long-range Boeing 777 flew more than halfway around the world nonstop Thursday in 22 hours and 42 minutes. One hundred years after the Wright Brothers established the tradition of official distance records with a 25-minute flight in a puttering biplane, the flight demonstrated for the first time that a new generation of jetliners will leave no two cities on earth beyond a nonstop flight.

While most of the world's traveling public will receive this news with excitement and optimism, I look at this as a step-back for travelers. I've always viewed connections as a useful way to erase the bad luck that is the great "who will I sit next to on this flight lottery in the sky." But now, with direct flights between far flung cities like Hong Kong and London becoming reality, the bad luck of sitting next to a "talker" or a "crying baby" or an "odorous person" or the dozens of other less than desirable seat mates you may encounter in the air, has turned into a 22 hour sentence to hell with no possibility of parole through connection. I am scared I tell you. Scared. Read more about the great step backwards here.