Southwest

JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines kicked off autumn airfare sales Tuesday. If you like the fares you see, book quickly because seats may go fast. Here are some sample ticket prices and destinations. -- Deal 1: JetBlue's Fall Shipping & Handling Sale sounds more UPS than JetBlue, but who cares at these prices? This sale is similar to one that JetBlue ran earlier this month. Sample each-way fares from Long Beach Airport (LGB) include $29 to Las Vegas;$49 to Sacramento, San Francisco and Oakland; $99 to Portland, Ore.,  and Seattle; and $149 to Washington, D.C., and Boston; prices exclude tax and fees.

Southwest Chamber Music's L.A. International New Music Festival is more a Los Angeles interstitial new music festival. Skirting touristy Europe, these Southwesterners are not interested in inclusiveness but in filling gaps that very much need filling. Monday's installment, the third of the festival's four concerts at the Colburn School's Zipper Concert Hall, did feature two admired L.A. composers who do not lack local institutional attention. Anne LeBaron, on the faculty at CalArts, happens to be the local composer of the moment with her breathtaking opera "Crescent City" currently in production and a piece on the Los Angeles Philharmonic's opening Hollywood Bowl concert in July.

Southwest Airlines Co., facing a Tuesday deadline to settle a dispute with regulators over the use of unapproved parts, said Monday that the parts were installed on almost twice as many planes as it first believed. The airline also has suspended the maintenance firm that got the parts from a subcontractor. Southwest said it had replaced the unapproved parts in more than 25 planes but needed more time to find parts for the remaining jets and avoid a disruption in its service.

The pace is picking up on the massive conservation project in process at the Southwest Museum in Mount Washington. The end is almost in sight: Only 36,000 objects to go! In 2003, when the poverty-stricken institution merged with the more affluent Museum of the American West under the umbrella of the Autry National Center in Griffith Park, the first priority was to save the Southwest's collection of about 250,000 Native American artworks and artifacts. Second only to the holdings of the National Museum of the American Indian inWashington, D.C., the collection had been inadequately housed for decades and further damaged by earthquakes, water and insects.

RE "Southwest Faces Major Repair Job," by Christopher Reynolds, March 21: What saddens me is that nobody seems to be willing to talk about the issue of the Southwest Museum closing in terms of the people who will truly be impacted by the decisions that are being made. Schoolchildren from Los Angeles County will no longer have the experience of coming to the Southwest Museum, of being introduced to Native American culture and artifacts in the way that they can at the museum. They will not have the experience of learning from elders in the community who hold the knowledge about this collection.

Regarding "Hidden Contract Rules Catch One-Way Fliers" (Travel Insider, May 13): The answer to the idiotic rules of most airlines is to fly Southwest Airlines. One-way fares are only slightly more than one-half round-trip fares. No Saturday stay-over is required. You can change your mind and get full credit for up to a year (no $75 or $100 fee). Businesses today seek every savings they can find. Trying to soak the businessperson is out of date. The only trend that makes sense is to treat all customers right and fill those seats.

Southwest Airlines Co., the only big U.S. carrier that's still profitable, will add nine flights while United Airlines exits three cities as it struggles with this year's 41% surge in jet fuel prices. Southwest's expanded service includes Denver, Oakland and Fort Lauderdale, Fla., where rivals are shrinking. UAL Corp.'s United said it was ending service in Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Fla., and Nagoya, Japan.

Southwest Airlines Co. named Chief Executive Gary Kelly chairman, succeeding Herb Kelleher, the co-founder of the low-fare carrier who is leaving the board after 41 years. Kelleher, 77, will remain an employee for five more years at the Dallas airline. Kelly, 53, previously was vice chairman. Kelly takes full charge of Southwest as he extends a series of changes designed to boost revenue in response to rising fuel and labor costs.

Southwest Airlines Co., looking to expand beyond its U.S.-only service, said it would sell tickets for travel to Mexico beginning in 2010 through a deal with Mexican partner Volaris. The announcement comes a few months after Southwest announced a similar deal with WestJet Airlines that would allow it to sell travel to Canada late next year. Dallas-based Southwest offered no details of fares or flight schedules for the deal with Volaris, saying that would be worked out by early 2010.

Southwest Airlines Co., the discount carrier that touts itself as an "efficiency machine," decided that it was a good investment to spend $100,000 for beverage stir sticks topped with a heart. That was Southwest's projected annual savings by switching to straws from the red-plastic sticks adorned with a heart in a nod to the airline's "love" marketing theme. Instead, it dropped the idea after some employees protested. "Feedback from our flight attendants was that they felt the benefit of keeping the heart stir stick outweighed the potential cost savings," Beth Harbin, a spokeswoman for Dallas-based Southwest, said.

Two Southwest Airlines flights with ties to Orange County and Phoenix were stopped Tuesday night after threats were made to the planes. The first incident began about 7:30 p.m. after Flight 1184 arrived at Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix from John Wayne Airport, an FBI spokesman told The Times. The plane was taken to an isolated area of the airport after authorities received an unspecified threat, said Special Agent Manuel Johnson of the FBI's Phoenix division.

SOUTHWEST MUSEUM / ELDRED STAIRS You don't have to fight the crowds in Santa Monica Canyon to get a great stairway workout. You can hike the historic wooden Eldred stairs in Highland Park and get great city and mountain views in the bargain. Duration: One hour Distance: 2.6 miles Difficulty: 3 on a 1-5 scale Transportation: Gold Line, Southwest Museum Station; Metro bus No. 81 1. Start from Figueroa Street and Woodside Drive. Climb the stairs to the elevated sidewalk, and pass Casa de Adobe and some fine Craftsman homes.

Southwest Airlines, which has pummeled its competitors with an advertising campaign boasting that “bags fly free,” will continue to charge a checked bag fee at its subsidiary AirTran Airways at least until 2014. Southwest Chief Executive Gary Kelly said a full integration between Southwest and the airline it purchased in 2010 will not be completed for another two years. Until then, he said, AirTran will continue to collect checked bag fees and reservation change charges, even though Southwest makes a point in television commercials and online ads of slamming its competitors for charging such fees.

STOCKTON -- In the center of a starkly lighted wrestling ring, RJ Brewer glared at the overwhelmingly Latino crowd and spread the flag of Arizona across his back. Buff, mean, white and glistening with baby oil, he snatched the microphone from the referee. "I come from the greatest city in the United States: Phoenix, Arizona!" the wrestler yelled in English. "Phoenix is the only city with a woman in power with the guts to get into the president's face and address the real problem in this country!"

Airfares keep heading up. In the latest rate hike for 2012, the nation's largest air carriers have increased fares $4 to $10 per round trip, citing higher fuel costs. The bump up in prices — the third increase this year — was initiated Monday morning by Southwest Airlines, the nation's largest carrier of domestic passengers. American, Delta, US Airways, United, Frontier and Virgin America had all matched the Southwest hike by noon, according to FareCompare, a travel website that keeps track of such increases.

In his keynote speech at the South by Southwest Music Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas, last week, singer Bruce Springsteen spoke at length about his musical story. The 62-year-old rock icon told the capacity crowd of his life as a fan, recalled the records that he fell in love with as a New Jersey teen, and conveyed the feeling of a shared victory when rock 'n' roll upended American youth culture and transformed the world. Springsteen then ran down the many ways that his version of the story is long in the past, offering evidence by reeling off an amazing list of subgenres from today's fractured American music scene.

A six-story-tall Doritos vending machine served as the backdrop for performances by artists such as Snoop Dog, White Denim and Mystikal at last week's South by Southwest Festival and Conference in Austin, Texas. It was perhaps the most impressive display of corporate sponsorship at the annual festival, which started out 25 years ago as a way to showcase indie bands but has since become a massive, mainstream music event. Chevrolet, Pepsi and FreeCreditScore.com were among 10 official sponsors of the festival, while Taco Bell, Marlboro and Spotify joined other big business names whose banners adorned Austin's dozens of live music stages.

Low-cost airlines that cut out many of the extras might not be expected to get high marks for service - just as fast food is unlikely to win culinary awards. But J.D. Power & Associates' 2012 Customer Service Champions did not include long-established carriers such as Delta Air Lines, United Airlines or American Airlines among the 50 companies from various industries that won the distinction this year based on value, service and other measures. Instead, the report listed low-cost carriers Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and San Francisco upstart Virgin America as the only airlines to win the award.