Southwest sale; LAX gets a new taxiway; Yapta improves service

Good morning travelers! There are only 44 more days to go until the 2008 Olympics begin. If you’re itching for news and info, check out the new Los Angeles Times Olympics blog, Ticket to Beijing.

Deal | Southwest’s Summer Sale is going on. Book by June 26 for travel on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from July 15 through Sept. 30, 2008. Plan ahead because this sale requires a 21-day advance purchase. Fares are reasonable. Burbank (BUR) to Seattle (SEA) or Portland, Oregon, (PDX) is $98 each way, pre-tax. Los Angeles (LAX) to Salt Lake City (SLC) is $85 one way, pre-tax, while Kansas City (MCI) is $106 each way, pre-tax. Check out the Southwest Airlines specials page.

Local | Los Angeles International Airport opens an $83-million taxiway today. It is expected to help prevent near-collisions.

Travel website | Yapta figured out what SideStep did years ago: It’s wise to have your product be Web-based instead of asking users to download it. Its new travel shopping website launched yesterday. While searching for airfares is nothing new for the Web (though Yapta now checks 30 domestic and international carriers versus eight when it started), the strength of the site is still letting users know when the price of their flight has dropped and if they qualify for some kind of refund. Note: if you do find a flight with Yapta that you want to buy, there are no booking fees. It connects you directly to the airline’s website for purchase. I was happy to see that Virgin America is one of the airlines it searches, but disappointed that Southwest is not.

— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Blogger

[Photo: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 24, 2008 at 8:37 am by Jen Leo and is filed under Good Morning, News, Tips & Advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.