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Not so many nice seats in the future?

It's been like WWE, but with only one side snarling.

That's why I've found this oddly mesmerizing.

Yes, I miss flying.

Not just because I'd like to see America from afar for once, but because there are people I want to talk to face to face.

Over the last few weeks, Zoom[1] -- and, of course, Microsoft Teams[2] -- have invaded people's lives to such a degree that some people don't know where the screen ends and their life begins.

Meanwhile, airlines have been spittling and snorting at the notion that Zoom and the like can replace the joys of business travel.

American Airlines CEO Doug Parker and United's CEO Scott Kirby have chuckled, respectively but not respectfully, that Zoom calls are plain awful[3] and that the first time a company loses a sale to someone who turns up in person is that last time they'll use Zoom as a substitute for flying[4].

Of course, I admired their brazen bravado, just as I feared they might be offering a touch of first-class blowhardiness.

Then along came Natarajan Chandrasekaran to offer Parker and Kirby a bracing shower.

Chandrasekaran is the chairman of Tata Sons[5]. This is a Mumbai-based holding company that enjoys around 100 constituent parts across such sectors as engineering, information systems, cars, communications, and tea. It said to be worth well over $100 billion.

And, of course, its business is multinational.

How, then, has the pandemic affected the way Tata's executives have done business?

Chandrasekaran told The New York Times[6] that he'd been in the habit of getting on a plane from India to the US, just

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