A while back I wrote an article analyzing the finances of online travel agency YTB. My conclusion was that it was better to be YTB than someone who is building a travel agency based on them. It all smelled a bit. Apparently I am not the only one who reached that conclusion as they were just sued by California’s Attorney General as a Ponzi scheme.

Brown Sues To Topple Online Pyramid Scheme

California Attorney General Edmund G. Brown Jr. today announced a lawsuit against YourTravelBiz.com for operating a “gigantic pyramid scheme” that recruited tens of thousands of members with deceptive claims that members could earn huge sums of money through its online travel agencies.

Wireless culture taking to the air

Delta Air Lines announced Tuesday that it will introduce Wi-Fi access on certain aircraft by fall and expand it to its entire domestic fleet of more than 330 planes by next summer. American Airlines and Virgin America previously have said they will launch in-flight broadband Internet services on certain planes by year-end.

TSA to allow laptops to stay in approved bags

There’s a new option for people annoyed at having to take their laptops out of their bags at airport security. The Transportation Security Administration will now allow travelers to leave their computers inside “checkpoint friendly” cases.

Airline industry axes 60m seats

The global airline industry will fly 60m fewer seats in the run-up to Christmas - equivalent to a 7% cut in flights - as the oil spike and economic downturn force carriers to axe services.

Kayak and American Airlines are having a bit of a tif:

Kayak.com drops American Airlines airfares from listings

American Airlines telling you that it will no longer be displaying airfares on Kayak.com or sister site Sidestep.com.

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner explained the company’s tiff with Kayak. The airline asked the meta-search engine to bar American ticket purchases through online travel agencies such as Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. As of today, American’s airfares were not available on Kayak.com but flight schedules were still listed.

and in the expected follow up story:

Kayak.com drops American Airlines airfares from listings

American Airlines spokesman Tim Wagner explained the company’s tiff with Kayak. The airline asked the meta-search engine to bar American ticket purchases through online travel agencies such as Orbitz.com or Cheaptickets.com. As of today, American’s airfares were not available on Kayak.com but flight schedules were still listed.

American Airline sues parent of Kayak.com and Sidestep.com

Fort Worth-based American Airlines is suing the parent of meta-search sites Kayak.com and Sidestep.com, saying the Web sites violated its agreement to use the airline’s airfare content.

At issue is whether the sites were allowed to display American fares through third-party sites, including orbtiz.com and cheaptickets.com — where the carrier must pay booking fees — rather than just on www.aa.com.

After Beheading, Greyhound Kills Ad Campaign

Yes, the company offering famously lousy service had just launched an ad campaign with the line “There’s a reason you’ve never heard of ‘bus rage’” when, on a trip from Alberta to Winnipeg, one of its passengers was apparently beheaded and eaten. Suffice to say, they’re doing away with the campaign

and in the strangest piece of news, the conspiracies around the murder that happened at the Olympics:

An American tourist is murdered, and conspiracy theories abound

What would make you stab a 62-year-old tourist to death in the middle of the day and then leap off a 150-foot tower? That’s a question you can’t help puzzling over if you’re in Beijing. What on earth was going on in the mind of Tang Yongming, the 47-year-old man who stabbed two Americans and their Chinese guide over the weekend? Todd Bachman, the father-in-law of the U.S. men’s volleyball coach, was killed in the attack.

This week I had a rare business trip to Atlanta, Georgia. I booked the least expensive flight as usual using an airfare aggregation site. In this case I used Kayak.com as I often do. But fare alone is not the only measure of which is the best flight. I had two things that made my trip less than ideal.

• The night before I was scheduled to depart, US Airways cancelled my flight. They did not have a crew. So after I had spent a lot of time picking the right flight so I could spend an evening in Atlanta (not knowing that a tornado had torn up downtown) I ended up instead getting to my hotel at midnight.
• I had a very tight connection on my flight back (26 minutes) which is less than I would recommend for anyone. My flight was delayed a few minutes by bad weather and I ended up running between flights and arrived at the gate where the monitors said I would find a flight to San Jose but found a plane waiting to go to Seattle instead. A moment later they announced the last call for my flight 2 gates down.

There are always things that cannot be controlled when you fly, but situations can be predicted. For instance, some flights are habitually late. What if I had known that my flight from Atlanta was always late, then there is no way I would have taken a chance on with such a short layover. There is now a airfare aggregation site has just that sort of information. The site is InsideTrip.com.

Boston.com writes:

You thought you got a good deal when you booked that $200 flight from New York to Fort Lauderdale after scouring various websites to find the lowest fare. But after suffering through a long delay, a cramped flight on an old plane, and the airline’s losing your bags, that flight may not have felt like a bargain, after all.

Most travel sites, like Expedia and Kayak, do a good job of digging up the cheapest airfare for a given route, often giving you dozens of options. But when it comes to key factors that can help determine whether a flight is worth the money or is one to avoid - like how much legroom you get, a flight’s on-time performance, and mishandled luggage rates - travel sites tend to fall short.

For each search, InsideTrip provides not just fares but also evaluations of what Pelter calls 12 “pain points.” These include the amount of legroom in a cabin, how often the flight is on time, the aircraft type (larger jets get higher ratings), how crowded a specific flight typically is, and if you can walk to your connection. It even considers how long it usually takes to get through the security checkpoint nearest the gate.

I have mentioned Kayak.Kayak.com before as one of my favorite sites to use for booking air travel. Kayak sent out a reminder of how to save money booking holiday travel that is worth passing along. If you specify that your dates are flexible (you must create an account to use this feature) you can bring up a graph that will help you pick the best day to fly.

It pays to know what others are paying. After doing a flight search, check the airfare history for a desired route by clicking on Chart View on the flight results page. Kayak’s Best Fare Trend Graph charts pricing for city/date pairs found by Kayak.com users over the past 90 days.

This chart will:

1. Let you know if the deal you are looking at is a good deal
2. Let you know if you might get a better deal by moving your trip a few days