My weekly column for ABCNews.com highlights the fact that plunging profits and rising costs are forcing airlines to bail on certain routes and even certain cities altogether. So, could you pull up to the airport only to find you have no way of getting out of town? Well, it hasn’t reached that level yet, but some cities will definitely start to feel the pinch.

To learn more, please check out the entire story on ABCNews.com (also picked up in the Huffington Post business section).

Whenever I talk about deals, I usually advise that you grab them fast, because they won’t last.

What an understatement — especially in today’s world of lightning fast deals.

For instance, we posted this brand new Deal of the Day on our special Deals section; that was on 4-29-08. With me? Okay, here’s what else was required:

• You had to BUY the ticket by May 2.
• You had to DEPART on May 3.
• You had to RETURN on May 5 or 6.

Talk about a whirlwind purchase, and, a whirlwind trip! But you’ll be seeing more of this, so best to keep reading.

UPDATE: More FEES Added!

Before I launch into this semi-rant, I want to make it very clear that I know the current price of fuel is killing the airlines — figuratively and literally. And believe me, I don’t want to start driving from Dallas to Los Angeles or New York any time soon.

That said, I don’t blame the airlines for trying to make a buck or trying to keep their head above water, but — I do have a bone to pick with some of their methods.

And, notice that much of my “crabbiness” stems not from airline fees, but from all the fees imposed by our local airports and the government!

Crabbiness Scale: from 1 Crab (minor grouchiness) to 4 Crabs (utterly outraged).

I now present to you — “Rick’s Crabby List”: click more to see it for yourself.

Oh, how the dominoes are falling.

First, longtime hold-out American Airlines decides to join the other airlines by instituting a $25 charge for checking a second bag.

Now comes word that US Airways is upping its “change fee” on non-refundable tickets — bringing it to a whopping $150!

Well, maybe it’s not all that “whopping” — after all, United already charges $150.

A few weeks we go, I highlighted the busiest flight routes by world region. With those statistics, “busiest” meant the largest number of weekly flights. Using those calculations, the busiest route in the United States is Honolulu-Kahului (Island of Maui). OK, fair enough. But what are the busiest flight routes in the US when it comes to sheer number of passengers?

Keep reading for a look at the Top 10 routes that service the most passengers annualy. In all honesty, you probably won’t be too surprised by the cities that dominate the list…

Yesterday Delta Airlines began the 14^th attempted domestic airfare hike which will affect the bulk of its route system (that’s over 13,000 city-pairs). United Airlines joined yesterday, and American came onboard today.

The increase - in the form of a fuel surcharge - is from $10 to $40 roundtrip, depending on the type of airfare and city-pair.

This means, travel between some city-pairs will include a whopping $110 roundtrip fuel surcharge. In comparison, the average transatlantic fuel surcharge is about $230 roundtrip.

It appears that Delta is poised to make its CEO’s call for a 15-20% airfare increase (to offset fuel prices) a grim reality in the coming the weeks. I’ll explain, if you keep reading.

I was looking over an analysts report this morning on Allegiant Airlines and was struck by the chasm between “the lowest of low cost airlines” and the legacy airlines.

Allegiants fuel bill went up at approximately the same percentage as the un-hedged legacy airlines and they still squeezed out a pretty impressive profit.

For those that are not familiar with Allegiant they fly a fleet of MD-80’s (just shy of 40 planes) with service to Vegas, Reno, Phoenix and popular Florida destinations from under served smaller cities, to leisure destinations at off the beaten path airports.

They tend to fly leisure travelers with non daily flight schedules and from all accounts tend to do a pretty good job at it — I am wondering if we’ll end up with more “Allegiants” in the near future for those cities that have been given up on by the bigger boys… Congrats Allegiant for hanging tough in what is definitely the most “trying” environment in history for air travel.

The demise of the “imminent” merger of Continental and United this weekend had me pondering the ramifications of the next widely reported merger: United and US Airways.

I thought it would be interesting to check out our flight schedule database and do some quick analysis on these candidates to see what sort of trouble might be brewing for travelers in the path of this potential “marriage”…

Just last week, I wrote an ABCNews.com column on how airlines have begun to nickel and dime us. Beyond the fuel surcharges and the airfare increases, carriers have managed to raise fees on just about every aspect of travel.

At the time I wrote the column, American Airlines was one of the few carriers left that wouldn’t charge you to check a second bag. That all changed today. American Airlines has announced that it will follow the majority of other major carriers and start charging $25 for a second checked bag.

The charges will kick in for tickets purchased on or after May 12th. However, American Airlines has said that the fee should only affect 4% of their passengers. Keep reading to see which travelers will be exempt from American Airlines’ second bag fee…

Last year, Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport (DFW) had its biggest year ever, in part thanks to the 5.5 million international passengers that came through its new Terminal D.

Now, DFW is hoping for more — after all, Terminal D can handle 12.8 million a year; and in recognition of all this international traffic, the airport has been named one of 20 “Model Ports” by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agency.

One thing Model Ports is supposed to do is streamline the customs process, and I think we can all get behind that. Keep reading.

As of today, the all business-class airline eos has shut down (and thanks to Joe Brancatelli of JoeSentMe for alerting us). Its last flights were over the weekend.

This is the second such airline to fold in the past several months (the other was Maxjet, in late 2007).

Eos flew between New York to London (Stansted); if you have tickets, contact your credit card company immediately.

UPDATE: As of 4-26-08, ALL the legacy airlines matched.

Our proprietary software shows that Continental Airlines matched the United initiated increase of 2% to 5% ($6 to $80 roundtrip) across the bulk of its route system.

Additionally US Airways has matched across approximately 35% of its route system from 2% to 4%.

In other minor airfare activity:

• American continued to firm up matching in markets it left out last night
• Frontier partially matched on some of their routes
• Northwest has some minor increase matching (less than 10% of their routes)

This leaves Northwest, who has typically been one of the last to match in past increases attempts — along with a major portion of the US Airways route system - yet to match.

I would expect this matching to occur on both airlines later tonight or over the weekend.

Last night at 8:00pm EDT both American and Delta matched the increase of $4 to $70 roundtrip initiated by United earlier in the afternoon.

This leaves only three legacy network airlines — Northwest, US Airways and Continental — yet to match their next chance to match will be at 10am EDT Friday.

United also showed some minor increase activity — firming up those few city pairs that were left out of initial increase at noon yesterday.

Both American Airlines and Delta Air Lines matched the increase by increasing airfares from 2% to 5% across the bulk of their respective route systems.

This increase attempt is now 15% short of the 20% called on by the Delta CEO earlier this week — he estimated it would require 15-20% in airfare hikes to make the airlines whole at $120 barrel oil.

These new priceswent into effect shortly after midnight EDT. Again, I cannot stress enough that consumers should lock in their summer airline travel as quickly as possible, especially on the remaining 3 legacy airlines that have yet to match as they are likely to match today and consumers who act quickly (before noon Friday) can save up to $70 roundtrip.

At noon today, United Airlines initiated the 13th attempted domestic airfare hike of 2008 - and note that, 8 of the previous 12 were widely successful.

I immediately broke this story, and it quickly appeared in media reports.

Details on the price hike: United raised airfares across the bulk of its domestic route system in a laddered fashion from $4 to $60 roundtrip for leisure travelers in over 5,500 city-pairs, and from $4 to $70 for business travelers in over 9,000 city-pairs.

The AP reports that United blames this 3% to 5% hike on, what else: soaring fuel costs.

You won’t have to travel too far to get hit with a substantial increase; keep reading for more on that.

Belgium-based Brussels Airlines has announced it’s trying to reduce fuel costs by dropping some weight on planes, and — by slowing some of their planes down.

They’re not slowing them by much: just about 6.2 miles per hour, and just on short hops throughout Europe. According to a BBC report, this would only add about a minute or two to the length of a trip, but it would cut the annual fuel bill by $1.6 million (these are Avro planes).

Wonder if that could work here? I’m sure most of us wouldn’t mind a little longer flight, if it would put a halt to some of those hefty fuel surcharges.

The first quarterly reports of 2008 are out, and the airlines are not looking good. But there was one bright spot:

Southwest. The only airline to show a profit.

Take a look at the excellent chart from the New York Times (keep reading below or click here) and you’ll see why. Only Southwest has been far-sighted enough to hedge the price of its fuel as much as it has, in the past — this year — and in the years to come.

I think you’ll like this one: it’s all about those “extras” that used to be freebies. You know what I’m talking about:

Food, headsets, baggage check-in. What til you hear what it all adds up to!

And it’s getting worse. Click here to read all about it, in my latest weekly column for ABCNews.com.

This week I seem to be Mr. Popularity (but don’t worry, it won’t go to my head). The reason for this is all the grim airfare news — airline losses, predictions of new rate hikes, and more “extras” that passengers have to pay for.

The networks asked me to do some analysis, and here’s the schedule:

• This evening, ABC’s World News will credit FareCompare with datawe provided
• Thursday night, I’ll be on the CBS Evening News
• This week, an interview I did with NBC will be featured in stories appearing on local NBC stations across the country

If you get a chance to watch, drop me a comment; I’m always interested in your feedback.

The BTS (Bureau of Transportation Statistics) released its report on average airfares for the fourth-quarter of 2007. Overall, the average cost of airline tickets is up 4% when compared to the fourth-quarter of 2006, and the average price of airfare has reached the highest fourth quarter level since 2001.

While airfare increases are affecting travelers all over the country, some cities are feeling the brunt a little more than others. Keep reading for Top 5 lists of airports with the highest average airfares and the greatest increase in average airfares from last year…

Yesterday, April 22, I reported that Delta CEO Richard Anderson said, “An airline ticket has got to reflect the full cost of fuel.” Then he got down to specifics:

Domestic airlines need to raise fares by 15% to 20% (and that’s just to break even).

I’ve decided to monitor this situation closely, to see if Delta and other airlines perhaps really do raise the price of their airline tickets by 20%; I want to see if (and when) this prediction comes true.

So stay tuned.

Did you see those big, bold headlines (on CNN and elsewhere) talking about Delta’s “whopping” losses? Most of them were along these lines: “Delta Reports $6.39B Quarterly Loss”.

$6.39 billion! But, wait. The “realoperating”loss is just…$274 million. Substantial, yes, but nowhere near billions. The other $6.1 billion or so “paper loss”is the “drop” in their expected stock price after coming out of bankruptcy (called a special item - I would say a very special item).

A quick review of the airlines 1^st quarter losses of 2008 (and, Southwest’s profits):

• Southwest Airlines - $34 million profit
• AMR (American Airlines) - $328 million loss
• Continental Airlines - $85 million loss
• UAL (United Airlines) - $542 million loss
• AirTran - $34.8 million loss
• JetBlue - $8 million loss
• Delta Air Lines - $274 million loss
• Northwest - $191 million loss

Reminds me of the screaming headlines from last month that claimed Southwest was supposedly flying unsafe planes. They weren’t. But the headlines garnered a lot of attention, which apparently was all that mattered.

A frightening quote from the CEO of Delta Airlines is reported by the Associated Press today: Richard Anderson told reporters that domestic airlines need to raise fares by 15% to 20%.

He added, “An airline ticket has got to reflect the full cost of fuel.” Right now, airline tickets don’t; you’ll see what I mean when you check out the chart detailing the airlines’ losses (see following page). Simply put, the fuel prices are killing them.

For those of you keeping score, there have been 12 attempted airfare hikes so far this year (8 widely successful), and now Delta’s CEO is telling us, there will be more. But what else can they do? According to Northwest’s CEO, cost-cutting measures “have largely been exhausted.”

My recommendation: if you’re traveling this summer, buy those tickets now, to lock-in the airfare price before it goes higher. And for more on the airlines’ latest losses, click here.

With aircraft maintenance issues and weather problems, we’re used to hearing about mass flight delays at this point. But there are some flights out there that just seem to be chronically late even when conditions are normal.

I thought it would be interesting to take a look at which flights are almost guaranteed to be late. Is there a particular airline that comes up short time and time again, or is it a specific airport that feels the brunt of delays?

Keep reading to see the five most consistently delayed flights from the 4th quarter of last year…

Once again, blame it on the high price of jet fuel.

According to the AP, United Airlines says it’s going to cut 1,100 jobs this year (500 management, 600 union jobs), and it will cut capacity by 9% in the 4^th quarter.

And, the airline will take another 10 to 15 narrow-body aircraft out of its fleet.

Sad thing is, United would have had a good quarter this year, if not for fuel costs, which have risen nearly 50% in a year.

With fuel prices continuing to rise and questions surrounding the state of the airline industry, the prognosticators have begun to prognosticate:

What will air travel be like in the future?

Many think they have the answer…but some of the answers sound like scenes from Back to the Future or an episode of “The Jetsons:”

“‘Globally, no more than 25 airports will be functional by 2025…only one of them in the Pacific Northwest.’ And that airport will be a ‘travelport,’ featuring high-speed electrical rail interconnections designed to carry passengers to and from all points around Cascadia.” (from the Vancouver Sun)

The above is from Simon Fraser University professor Anthony Perl, and it’s similar to predictions futurists have been making for nearly a century.

Some of the most exciting predictions of the past? Keep reading…