Medary.com

On a recent rather unpleasant flight on that rather unpleasant low-cost airline called Airtran, I made the comment to Snookums that "it's obvious that air travel is too cheap."  This astonishingly elitist comment escaped my mouth inside the miserable (I could have said "rather unpleasant" but I'm trying to diversify) New York LaGuardia waiting to board our flight home . . . via Atlanta, of course.

This, then, demonstrates the principle "be careful what you wish for":

 DALLAS - If you're taking a nonstop flight to summer vacation, better pony up a lot more money or start unpacking.

In many cases, major carriers have more than doubled or even tripled their cheapest U.S. fares from last summer's fares. That's on top of the new fees for checking luggage and other services.

Tom Parsons, chief executive of the discount travel site Bestfares.com, looked at the lowest fares for nonstop travel in July -- the kind of tickets that usually must be bought long in advance and therefore appeal mostly to vacationers, not business travelers.