Wow, planning a trip to Denver and checking an Avis corporate discount rate vs. Hotwire, $100 more for 4 days! We ended up getting Avis through the Hotwire process — unreal! Sometimes I really wonder about this travel stuff… car rentals seem very expensive this summer.

When I was in South Africa recently, this story about a domestic flight delay was reported in the local newspapers. Yes, a 2 hour flight took 15 hours and included flying back and forth between the two cities 5 (five) times! Nuts… but I guess that’s what you get for flying an airline called Mango. It’s better than the name of one of South Africa’s other domestic airlines: One Time (no, I’m not making it up:  South Africans have a strange sense of humor!).

How cool is this website, Flightaware.com? Especially check out the visualization of a day’s worth of airline travel in the US… Thanks OTR!

Finally, the catalyst I needed to forever switch from Orbitz to Expedia! it’s great but rare when you can actually identify these “pivot points” as a consumer…

Onlinetravelreview mentioned this special I stumbled across while looking for trips to New York — cross-country nonstop for $137 on American. Unbelievable! It didn’t last of course….

I’ve had the misfortune of discovering the new A&E show, Airline. This documentary (I believe all documentaries are now called “reality TV shows”, right?) follows the misadventures of the passengers, crew and ground staff of Southwest Airlines, mostly in Chicago’s Midway airport and LAX. I really like Southwest - they are great at what they do - but you’re pretty much watching all the worst parts of airline travel condensed into one 30 minute show, reminding you of the love-hate relationship you probably have with travel. It’s like watching a train wreck though: hard to tear yourself away.

It’s very well done - well edited together, in a way that you feel you’re part of these several different stories. I don’t think any other airline but Southwest would or could do a show like this - naturally they come out smelling like roses but it’s pretty similar to how they are in my experience. I’d encourage you to check it out: all I can say is that I think it’s brilliant PR/marketing by Southwest.

Southwest does it again — great earnings, and of course they get there by LUV or is it KISS (keep it simple stupid)? Simplicity and execution help Southwest quarter after quarter. Separately, they’re no longer going to pay travel agent commissions. Even as online direct travel bookings continue to rise (and Southwest is the leader there) only a select number of suppliers will be able to force consumers to use their online resources exclusively. Southwest is and probably will continue to be that way, while others have tools to move consumers toward their direct properties. Travel remains an interesting, complex online market: one of the areas I regularly bookmark is the blog of my former colleague Jared Blank.