Airlines, Airfare | featured news

If it's an April Fools' Day joke, it's an awfully elaborate one. If not, Samoa Air has become the first airline in the world to do what was previously unthinkable: Charge passengers by weight. Yes, you get weighed. By a stranger. At the airport.

The airline business is transforming into a profitable industry, thanks to fewer flights and higher fares. Mergers have helped bring rationality to the market, Smisek told an aviation conference Thursday. For far too long, he said, too many airlines were chasing too few passengers.

Airlines are once again trying to get business travelers to pay more for their last-minute trips. For the fifth time this year, airlines are trying to raise fares, says Rick Seaney, CEO of FareCompare.com, which tracks fares. The previous three attempts focused on tickets purchased within seven days of travel, which are typically most popular among business travelers.

Airlines are charging premiums for window and aisle seats, making it harder for groups to fly together, say passenger advocates.

Douglas Quinby was shocked at the price. Traveling from Atlanta to New Orleans in two weeks for work, the travel industry analyst found an airline ticket for $130 a week ago and grabbed it.

Heads up, travelers. For the sixth time this year, an attempt is underway to bump up airfares.

On Jan. 24, the Transportation Department will enforce a rule requiring that any advertised price for air travel include all taxes and government fees.

The tax holiday is over for U.S. airlines. Many carriers dropped fares Monday as federal taxes were added back into the total ticket price for travelers after a 16-day Federal Aviation Administration shutdown. Most U.S. airlines raised base fares last month when taxes were suspended, pocketing the money that would have gone to the government and swallowing the potential price break for consumers.

As late as this morning, it looked like if you had traveled while the Federal Aviation Administration was shut down, there was a good chance that the government owed you a tax refund.

The government is likely to lose more than $1 billion in airline ticket taxes because lawmakers have left town for a month without resolving ...