Want indisputable proof positive that sitting in Seat 2B and being called a business-travel "expert" means absolutely nothing? Here it is: Just as I typed "I'm writing my annual 'things I learned this year' column now because nothing important happens on the road after Thanksgiving," news of the bankruptcy filing of American Airlines found its way onto my desk.

So it's pretty clear that I still have lots of things to learn about life on the road and the day-to-day travails of being a business traveler.

Anyway, as I was saying: I'm writing my annual "things I learned this year" column now because almost nothing happens on the road after Thanksgiving Day. It's time to gather up a year of collective intelligence, sift through the detritus, and try to learn some lessons about the day-to-day torture of business travel.

The American Way Leads to a Dead End

It was just six weeks ago that we discussed the decline and almost complete fall of the American Airlines empire. There's nothing new to say about the official Chapter 11 filing early on Tuesday morning—except that AMR Corp.'s chief executive, Gerard Arpey, is out. And any of you folks who thought you could profit from the carrier's woes by buying shares on the cheap have lost your investment. What part of "don't invest in an airline" don't you understand?

Another thing we have learned about airline bankruptcies: The carrier protests that everything is normal and they are usually correct. In the days and weeks after a filing, airlines go out of their way to show you that flights and operations continue unabated. In fact, it is usually the best time to fly an airline because it's often the only time they uphold their service standards. Going forward in 2012, however, you should expect a significantly downsized American Airlines—and a carrier in desperate search for a post-bankruptcy identity.

Big Business Doesn't Always Get What It Wants

When I wrote my objection last spring to AT&T's plan to gobble up T-Mobile, I believed business travelers were being steamrolled, but I didn't expect our needs would be addressed. After all, as a business traveler, I watched Delta and Northwest merge and United and Continental merge, and no one listened to our outraged cries.

But whether it's because customers justifiably "hate" AT&T or because federal regulators realize that they would be giving one company a functional monopoly over U.S. access to the global GSM mobile service, the deal between AT&T and T-Mobile is on the rocks. On Thanksgiving Day, AT&T retrenched, withdraw some of its regulatory filings, and set aside $4 billion to cover a potential dissolution of the deal. It has spent the last week searching for options, most of them involving a spin-off of assets that would shore up smaller mobile competitors.

Either way, it looks like business travelers may have actually triumphed on this one. If the deal dissolves, T-Mobile gets billions of dollars to reinforce its operations and access to a new slice of precious mobile spectrum. If AT&T gets approval for the deal by a big spin-off, second-tier mobile operators will get stronger. As I asked in April, "the downside of that would be?"