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Consumers snapping up cheap airfare deals online
By JIM BROOKS If you're like most people who are planning to travel by air, you or someone you know has researched your flight plans on the Internet. Air travel continues to grow in popularity as the preferred means of travel, too. Credit the economy, credit the Internet -- but whatever you do, you better do your online research if you want to get the best airfare. Airlines are reporting a genuine boom in air travel, with an average of 80 percent of their available seats per flight occupied by paying customers -- the highest numbers since World War II, according to the Air Transport Association. The credit doesn't all belong to Priceline.com, which has been one of the leaders in the bargain airfare Web site race. Other sites, include Travelocity (www.travelocity.com) and Expedia (www.expedia.com) have helped fuel the increase in the number of people who are buying their tickets online. While most air travel is still sold "the old way," fully 10.3 percent of leisure and self-booked air travel is done online, according to researcher Jupiter Communications. But the trend is clear -- more and more tickets will be sold online in the future. Airlines themselves have gotten in the online ticket business too, as they've discovered it's cheaper to sell tickets online than through their own agents or outside travel agents. Southwest Airlines, which has been selling online since 1996, revealed during U.S. Senate hearings earlier this year that its ticket sales online should hit the $1 billion mark -- representing almost 25 percent of its gross annual revenue. A recent industry survey reveals this year, airlines expect 58 percent of their income will come from either direct sales online, or through other online sales outlets. NAME GAME. Joining the crowd of celebrities who are suing to get clear their Internet domain names, pop singer Madonna has filed a complaint with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) to gain control of the Web address www.madonna.com. A New Jersey man currently owns the domain name, and at one time was using it as a pornography site. The WIPO provides people with the means to get back an Internet address they believe they have a right to without an expensive legal battle. The current owner of madonna.com argues that the singer -- whose real name is Madonna Louise Ciccone -- has no more right to the name than anyone else. Rather than give up the domain to Madonna, the owner plans to donate it to the Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital in Lincoln, Neb. In a Reuters interview, Madonna's publicist, Liz Rosenberg, said she believed the singer had the rights to the domain. "She happens to be the most famous Madonna in the world," she said. The WIPO is due to decide the issue Sept. 16. Other celebrities have recently sued to gain control of Web addresses bearing their names. The WIPO ruled in favor of actress Julia Roberts and comedienne Rita Rudner, but rules against singer Sting on grounds sting.com did not contain his real name, and the term was a common English word. PIKACHU AND YOU. If you're the parent of a Pokemon fan, there's a new computer virus that's going around you'll want to be mindful of. The "Pokey" computer virus works in a similar way to the "Love Bug" virus that hit computers around the world earlier this year. The virus arrives in the form of an e-mail attachment, and users of Microsoft Outlook find it will send itself to everyone in the user's address book. The message is titled "Pikachu Pokemon," with the message "Pikachu is your friend." The attachment is an animated, bouncing Pikachu character. While the animation plays, the program is making changes that could delete the Windows and Windows/System directories the next time the computer is rebooted. The virus hasn't done much damage to date because users see a warning when it tries to delete the system files, and requires the user to approve the file deletions. If you receive a Pokemon-theme message with an attachment, your best bet is to delete the message rather than opening it. CENSUS DATA ONLINE. Genealogy buffs will be excited to know that Ancestry.com, the family history research Web site, has started off a an ambitious project to publish online the digitized images of all the pages of the original U.S. Census Bureau documents from 1790 to 1920. The collection includes data on more than 450 million people. The first segment of the project will be available online this fall. By year's end, Ancestry.com will have more than 1 billion fully searchable records. Users will be able to view and print out copies of the original census documents. Genealogists know that the federal census records are some of the most valuable for researching family histories. The information has been available at many libraries, though traditionally the records are kept on microfilm. This will mark the first time the information will be available for viewing and printing on computer. For more information, visit the Web site at www.ancestry.com. Comments and questions about this column may be sent to jbrooks@myoldkentuckyhome.com, or visit www.myoldkentuckyhome.com on the World Wide Web. | HOME | |