Last week I posted a note on which cities lost the most scheduled fall air service - a sneak peak at some of the underlying research I was doing for an article.

This week I thought it was only fair to highlight those cities on the flip side — which have gained more scheduled fall air service.

More air service is always a good sign for airline ticket prices as the main driver of price is competition. Amidst massive cutbacks related to the rise in fuel, a few cities have actually gained service — whether they were underserved or whether an airline is trying to steal some market share — these cities are definitely benefiting:

Last week when I was writing my weekly column for ABCNews.com “Why Airlines Might Abandon Your City” I began to do my research in my normal “geek” fashion and thought some of you might like to see what actually goes on “under the hood”.

I first pulled together some databases of flight schedule data from the end of April last year and that same data for end of April this year. My goal was to compare scheduled fall (October)flight service last year vs. this year (apples-to-apples) — so I picked a typical Monday in October 2007 to compare with a similar Monday in October 2008.

What I found was completely fascinating and became part of the underlying research for the column. I would like to share with you some of these unbelievable numbers that didn’t make it into the column ..

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…

After two “sticky” airfare increases in January 2008 (on four attempts since the first week of 2008), the current domestic fuel surcharge sits at $40 roundtrip for most flights.

One way to correlate the effect of these 2008 airline ticket price increases and surcharges — along with the 17 other system wide domestic airfare hikes in 2007 — is to check inside the numbers …

Yesterday, the Air Transport Association released January U.S. airline revenue numbers showing that airline ticket “yield” (average airline ticket price passengers payed to fly one mile) was up over January of 2007 reflecting the continued trend in solid demand, higher airline ticket prices and seat supply restraint…

Let me put on my myth-busting hat: I just saw this AP article in The San Jose Mercury News, called “When is the best time to book airfare?”

Good question; bad answer. According to the article, late Thursday is the best time to check. WRONG.

The article goes on to quotea source as saying “Our experience with airlines has shown us that they update available seats around 12 a.m. Eastern time every day.” WRONG AGAIN.

So when IS the best time to book? Click “more” to find out…

Liked this? Then check out “How to Buy Intelligently”

Making a good airfare purchasing decision requires a healthy dose of technology and education.

Today I want to broaden your insider knowledge of airlines and their prices by chatting a bit about the “invoice” price of an airline ticket.

Since you don’t actually own the seat you fly — the “invoice” price is related to the flights that make up your trip and the easiest unit of measure for comparison is “price per mile”.

As you might imagine airlines have a pretty significant difference in their costs.

Would you shop for a car without knowing the Kelly Blue Book or Edmunds invoice? Keep reading–this will help you find cheap airfare sales.

As 2007 winds down, I thought it might be fun to do a little experimentation with our new “Best Time to Buy” database that will be rolling out early in 2008 and take a look at the price of travel on official U.S. Holidays.

Certainly extra long weekends invite many to checkout airline ticket prices and as always I am intrigued to find which departure and destination cities are the best overall for travelers, so putting on the “Geek” cap on this morning I put together a ranking I would like to share…

Each and every day, airfare changes are made. Sometime, it’s in the tens of thousands. Sometimes, it’s hundreds of thousands a day.

And here at FareCompare, we track them all. A single “research mode query” (your question about a particular fare) hits over 10-computers during this process, but gets you your information in about 2-seconds! That’s how we get you word of the cheap airfare sales first!

We also have over 3-billion “historical” airfares to help you can make the best buying decisions.

Put it all together, with our Email Alerts. You simply sign in, and get the best deals, first.

As promised, we are revisiting the subject of the “slowest single security line in the busiest airports”.

Once again, the information on “wait times” comes from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA). Other data and criteria we used:

• Airports: We selected our airports from a “Top 40″ list of U.S. airports, the “busiest” ones, based on passenger enplanement statistics from the Bureau of Transportation Statistics
• Days/Times: We selected as our “target” Fridays from 2pm to 6pm (local times) during the weeks from Nov. 2 through Nov. 30 (in order to show a “busier” time than emerged from our earlier list)
• Maximum “waits”: We purposefully chose to highlight the single slowest line, at a single security-check point, per airport. We did NOT choose to highlight multiple long lines at an airport or terminal; such a list might show only JFK in the Top 10. By highlighting a single “slowest line” per airport, we hope to show you a variety of “waiting in line” experiences.

And the airport with the longest “wait time” at a security-checkpoint? Top honors go to…JFK. Keep reading for the rest.

Every couple of weeks I am going to do a post to see what the airlines have been up to on their U.S. domestic flight schedules.

Who is dumping flights? What cities are getting new flights or worse having flights removed? What sort of planes are they changing out and all sorts of geek information.

I picked today as a start for this type of post because of the the recent run up in fuel prices to see how the airlines are reacting:

Sorry, New Orleans you won the top spot on this list. Yes, Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport had the longest security lines of the top-40 busiest U.S. airports.

See how we figured this out, and view the rest of the 11-slowest security lines, by clicking “more.”

Update: Wanted to say thanks for all the response to this post. I also wanted to clear up why we chose Monday (2:00pm - 6:00pm) the idea was to pick a time that was relatively busy, but by no means the busiest time of the week. I am going to follow up this post (see it here) with a look at the TSA’s data for Fridays during the same time period which is a much busier time window. Maybe we’ll see some longer waits at airports that didn’t make the initial list. TSA provides the data, we are just interpreting it across a wide range of airports.

As many of you who follow this blog are aware, the legacy airlines have increased airfare 8 times since labor day weekend (a few times for the lower cost airlines and probably at least 1-more price increase before the end of the year). But, in the midst of these increases, both legacy and lower-cost airlines have also fired out off-peak holiday travel sales; however, these are only for “very flexible” travelers (cheap flights, yes, but during times and days you normally wouldn’t want to travel) and we should note, these off-peak fares are available only in limited city-pairs.

Usually when the major airlines lower prices significantly (airfare sales), they tend to highlight the large hubs and most popular destinations they’re offering deals for.

It’s rare that our airfare processing system notes new airfare deals to some of the “really” small airports out there.

It was fun to see on Halloween that United Airlines has seen the light (or the darkness as it were) and has offered savings ranging from $20 to $300 on new 21-day advance tickets to/from some of the smallest airports in the U.S:

One might ask — Is there such a thing as a comfortable ride in coach?

Definitely a question worth debating (so fire away in the comments, but not what I am shooting for) — what I am shooting for in this quick study is to answer this complex question without a big discussion of seat pitch and leg room, but rather taking a close look at the actual flight schedules and airplanes of an airline to see if there were some interesting nuggets to help us on the quest to answer this question (and yes I understand that Midwest is mostly all business and has warm cookies, so don’t send me notes)…

As we all prepare to go home for Thanksgiving, I thought it would be interesting to show you some more insider flight schedule information to help you make the best holiday travel flying decision.

The following list shows each airline and the top 10 cities with the most added seats in the past year, along with the 10 cities with the most removed seats. The comparison uses our historical flight schedules for travel the day before Thanksgiving last year versus the most recent flight schedules for the day before Thanksgiving this year.

The idea is to provide you valuable information about your favorite airline (assuming you have one …) so that you can see which airlines and cities you might want to avoid (or travel on).

Click “more” for the list (and for more valuable info).

One of my biggest pet peeves is the notion that shopping “very early” will always get you the best deal. Yes, the early bird does get the worm, but when it comes to air travel the “very early” bird gets punched in the nose.

It should be noted that this discussion is only related to purchasing domestic U.S. airline tickets (not international).

First I want to be very clear that procrastination is not — I repeat NOT — a good idea. If you buy an airline ticket inside 14 days before departure, you are going to pay business rates which can be 3-6 times the rate had you purchased outside 14 days before departure.

So…when to start shopping? Click “more.”

I just wanted to let everyone know that FareCompare has released a new tool that makes it easier to find the best airfares first.

We’re calling it Rick’s Instant Airfare Analysis (for now). With the new tool, you can quickly see historical data, pricing trends, star ratings and much more, so you know instantly when your best chance to get the best airfare is. We do all the work for you, so you don’t have to spend time searching for the right data.

Here’s a full article that gives a detailed breakdown of what exactly Rick’s Instant Airfare Analysis can do for you.

I’ve always been intrigued by the types of planes particular airlines choose for their fleets. Are they getting rid of larger jets and replacing them with several smaller craft? Are they using more large planes in the hope that it will cut down delays? Are they relying on the same type of fleet they’ve always had, or are they thinking of taking on new products put out by Boeing and Airbus?

In order to answer those questions and to get a clearer picture of what’s going on in the sky, I thought it might be interesting to break down the number of flights in the domestic U.S. on a typical fall Monday (November 19, 2007) and show you which airlines are flying which airplanes. Luckily have I have the worldwide flight schedules at my disposal and with a series of data slicing queries I was able to come up with these numbers…