n Air Travel News

·       Effective August 28, Northwest Airlines will start charging $15 for a first piece of checked luggage (the carrier previously announced a $25 fee for checking a second bag). To speed up the check-in process, NWA will allow passengers to pay checked-baggage fees at www.nwa.com within 24 hours prior to departure.

·       On a similar note, Europe’s RyanAir (not to be confused with the Ryan Air many of you know as a vacation charter airline) is experimenting with a “carry-ons only” policy on routes heavily used by business travelers. The discount carrier offers flights in Ireland and throughout Europe. U.S. airlines are said to be watching this no-checked-bags-period experiment with interest.

·       JetBlue Airways is now charging customers for pillows and blankets. The carrier has started offering an "eco-friendly" travel blanket and pillow that can be purchased for $7 on flights longer than two hours. The pair come in a kit with a $5 coupon to home furnishings retailer Bed Bath & Beyond.

·       Delta Air Lines will soon begin offering wireless Internet access on some of its domestic fleet. The service will be available on some planes as soon as next month, starting with Delta's MD-88 jets and will cost $9.95 for flights of less than three hours and $12.95 for a longer itinerary.

·       Nashville International has consolidated the A/B and C/D concourse security screening areas into one central checkpoint, a move they said will improve customer service and speed up processing times.

·       If you’ve flown out of Toronto’s Lester B. Pearson International Airport recently and used one of their check-in kiosks in the process, you might want to check your credit card statement and credit report. An investigation is underway on the security of its 150 self-service check-in kiosks after credit card-issuing financial institutions noticed isolated patterns of fraud.

·       Revealing new full-body scanners will be coming to Chicago’s O’Hare International by the end of the year.  The scanners, which will be scattered among the airport’s 10 security checkpoints, are part of a pilot program designed to help detect hidden weapons, including plastic explosives that might slip through metal detectors. Some privacy advocates think scanners that “see” through clothing go too far. Proponents say it’s a good alternative for those who don’t want to be touched in a secondary-screening pat-down. And besides, they point out, the screener won’t be able to see your face.

·       For an updated look at current and pending flight cuts by state (warning: it’s not a pretty picture!), check out this USA Today map. Globally, it is estimated that there will be 59.7 million fewer seats in the air by the fourth quarter of 2008, just one more reason to book early and avoid making changes.

·       Remember that annoying Saturday night stay-over rule for the most inexpensive fares? Apparently United is preparing to resurrect it, beginning in October, for its lowest fares. Several other airlines are expected to follow suit in markets where they don’t compete with low fare carriers like AirTran, JetBlue and Southwest.

·       Frequent flyer programs continue to lose value. Continental Airlines is the latest to pare its perks, and most programs now require fees of $25 to $100 to claim an award ticket. As overall seat inventory diminishes, so too will the “free seat” inventory for frequent flyer and corporate perks programs. Our advice: if you have a lot of miles or corporate perks points stashed away, start using them before they become totally worthless!