Virgin America opens Seattle; SWA fare sale; $10,000 screw-up?

Good morning travelers! I’m in Las Vegas and the weather is beautiful, but I can whinge a little because I’m missing Virgin America’s Seattle launch. Yep, they’re having their inaugural flight from Los Angeles (LAX) to Seattle (SEA) today. Our own blog editor Tony Pierce is headed out to LAX to check out the party. Virgin America is going to have rock and roll legends the Donnas play at the gate, followed by an in-flight concert line-up of indie acts including MTV-U winning band Bamboo Shoots, musician Cisco Adler and singer-songwriter Michael Tolcher. I know Grant Martin from Gadling will be onboard and Jaunted wouldn’t be Jaunted if they weren’t giving Virgin America some love (but I don’t have confirmation that they’re on the flight).

California | In news you’re way too familiar with, gas prices are still going up. The California average for the cheap stuff is now $3.68. The national average is $3.32. Los Angeles Times Staff Writer Whitney Friedlander gives you a few alternatives in her recent post “Park the car - eco-friendly vacation and ‘road trip’ tips“.

Airlines | Southwest is having another national sale. $49-$99 each way, pre-tax, for 14-day advance purchase. Deals are limited to travel on Tuesdays or Wednesdays.

Travel websites | Speaking of Tuesday and Wednesday, last night we put up a post about travel deal newsletters. Whose newsies do you trust the most and which day is the best day for deals? I was happy to see that Kayak chimed in and pointed to their Thursday deal round-up where they claim to list not only deals on their site, but those on other sites too.

Reader comments | Did you read the “$10,000 airfare screw-up?”? Carol, who the story was about, wrote in and commented on their situation.

Social networking | The Happy Hotelier has put together a group of travel bloggers on Twitter. I love Twitter and this will make for great reading. We’ll have to make sure we add Twitter.com/latimestravel to the list.

Have a great day everyone.

— Jen Leo, Los Angeles Times Travel Deal Blogger

[Photo: Space Needle chess, Seattle, K Ting / Your Scene, Los Angeles Times]

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8, 2008 at 8:57 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.