The NYTimes had an article this morning about various reason planes are delayed that may seem stupid to us. The featured example was a broken coffee pot and it turns out that they need to get it fixed or totally disabled before take off out of fear it might signal a larger problem.

But, why I'm writing this was that the article contained the tidbit that an airplane coffee maker costs between $7,000 and $20,000.

Now, I get why you can't just plug in a Mr. Coffee, but it seems to be essentially the same thing, it draws in and heats water and pushes that water through ground coffee and a filter and into a serving container that's kept warm. It also has a latch to keep the container in place when not in use. And, it needs a circuit breaker to intervene if something goes askew.

That's all fine, but does that really increase the cost to a minimum of 7 grand?? Sort of sounds like the legendary toilet seat to me. We're not talking about one of those Swiss wonders that grinds the beans on demand, pushes the used grounds into a little container and includes a very small elf to do the work. They certainly pretty much resemble your basic coffee brewing machine.