I'm an avid user of consumer flight-search tools. I always have one or two trips I'm planning at any given time. I use a handful of flight search engines on a daily basis, always checking fares at least once or twice a day (you'd be surprised how quickly options and fares move around). I'm also a general believer that flight search options out there are pretty good. Especially for domestic travel, it's not hard to quickly know what is available and for how much. But that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement or that some folks aren't doing some interesting things. I wanted to draw your attention to a few innovations in flight search that I think are poised to become mainstream.

	Posted by: Evan Comments: (1) Last Comment: David LeCompte More by Evan airline search

	Posted by: Data Hub More by Data Hub airline Airline Business 2010 Survey check-in Sita

For those keeping score at home, we have posted this hopefully handy chart of deadlines for U.S. airline-global distribution system participation agreements. To include the months of expiration would be a bit onerous, but you get the picture. Of note, all "full content" GDS agreements for Alaska, American and US Airways expire next year.
Continental Airlines would be in the same situation if it didn't last month announce an extension to its Travelport deal. Although the deadline for its Amadeus agreement is not clear, Delta is in no rush to come to new terms with Sabre and Travelport. United on Aug. 4 announced an extension to 2013 with Travelport, meaning none of its deals expire next year. We'll update this post as results come in. Let us know if you can fill in any blanks...

	Amadeus	Sabre	Travelport
AirTran	ND	2011	ND
Alaska Airlines	2011	2011	2011
American Airlines	2011	2011	2011
Continental Airlines	2011	2011	2013
Delta Air Lines	ND	2013	2013
JetBlue	ND	2012	2012
Southwest Airlines	NP	ND	2017
United Airlines	2012	2013	2013
US Airways	2011	2011	2011
ND = Not Disclosed NP = Not Participating Sources: GDS company statements, industry sources, The Beat

	Posted by: Data Hub More by Data Hub airline GDS global distribution system

A Congressional subcommittee last month noted that a non-binding IRS ruling leaves "unsettled" the question of whether ancillary airline fees for bags and add-ons should be taxed. As the National Journal's Transportation Experts blog explores the debate, the National Business Travel Association is undecided for now, executive director Mike McCormick said.

	Posted by: Jay More by Jay a la carte airline fees merchandizing Mike McCormick National Business Travel Association unbundling

This week we take in-depth looks at the recent earnings results posted by American Airlines, US Airways, United Airlines, Continental Airlines and Delta Air Lines. Even before the formal announcement was issued this morning, it had been clear for some time that United Airlines president John Tague was not a member of the executive transition team that was going to stay with the "new" United. That fact was also crystal clear as you listened to the airline's earnings call last week.
This morning, the airline formally announced that John, Kathryn Mikells, Graham Atkinson, and Rosemary Moore would not be staying with the "new" United.

	Posted by: PlaneBuzz More by PlaneBuzz airline financial performance UAL Corp.

If you want to place blame for tarmac delays, bad airline customer service, and nickel & diming fees -- look no further than how you yourself purchase plane tickets. As consumers, we choose to purchase services based on any number of criteria that are important to us. In return, suppliers of these services cater their strategies to try to meet our needs and win that business.
If we purchase things as a commodity, it will get sold as a commodity. Plain and simple.

	Posted by: Evan More by Evan airline commodity GDS global distribution system

	Posted by: Data Hub More by Data Hub airline capacity traffic

The Open Axis Group airline standards body named new participants joining the organization alongside the Airline Tariff Publishing Co. as allied members: AOI Marketing, ARC, Datalex, eNett International, Farelogix, LUTE Technologies AG, Mobiata, PASS Consulting Group and Radixx International. No global distribution systems.

	Posted by: Jay More by Jay airline Open Axis standards XML

With the full set of statistics about May now released, people have been doing some analysis on whether the tarmac delay rule that took effect on April 29 had an impact on cancellations. The DOT is happy to promote that the number of 3 hours+ tarmac delays in May was 5, a major reduction from the 34 on 2009. So clearly it worked, right?
No so fast, points out Brett Snyder in the Cranky Flier column. Cancellations are also way up, so that means many people people were inconvenienced to reduce the tarmac delays. So clearly it didn't work, right?

	Posted by: Evan More by Evan airline Department of Transportation tarmac rule

Air Canada, American Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and US Airways, plus the Airline Tariff Publishing Company, announced the formation of their Open Airline XML Integration Standard group to "promote a standardized XML (eXtensible Markup Language) schema as the optimal electronic messaging structure for airline system connectivity used in content distribution." The group named as executive director Jim Young, a travel distribution veteran who helped found the industry's existing XML standards body, now called OpenTravel.

	Posted by: Jay More by Jay airline Airline Tariff Publishing Company ancillary revenue Farelogix Jim Young merchandising merchandizing unbundling XML