Southwest Airlines

No need to get a costume to take advantage of Southwest Airlines' Halloween airfare sale on winter travel. Follow the pumpkins on the airline’s website to cash in on fares starting at $30 each way — until Thursday. [ Updated at 6:05 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 26:   Virgin America also launched a "No Tricks, Just Treats" airfare sale that started at $34 plus tax each way.] The deal: One-way fares under the Southwest Airlines offer are $30, $60, $90 and $120, plus tax, based on how far you fly. For example, flights under 450 miles cost $30 and flights 1,501 miles or more cost  $120.

Regarding "10 Spots Beyond the Luau" by Beverly Beyette [Oct. 10]: I thoroughly enjoyed my recent trip to Kauai, and one of the highlights was a quick stop in Old Hanapepe. It is charming and laid-back, and it really gives you a feel for what towns in Kauai must have been like 50 or 60 years ago. Although I didn't have a chance to visit every gallery in town, I did stop by Kauai Fine Arts, which offers lovely antique prints and Hawaiian quilts at reasonable prices. The Hanapepe Café & Bakery has a nice lunch menu and incredibly delicious pastries.

If there is any upside to airline fees (besides millions in industry profits ), Southwest Airlines may have found it with its Help Us Help Them EarlyBird Check-In campaign. The program promised  that for every $10 fee paid by passengers for preferred boarding and early seating between Sept. 21 and Oct. 4, Southwest would donate $1 to help wildlife and habitats in the Gulf Coast recover from the Deepwater Horizon oil spill . The potential amount raised would be capped at $100,000.

Fond memories of City of Light Merci to Chris Erskine for his wonderful souvenir of Paris ["The First Time I Saw Paris," Aug. 22]. He captured the essence of Paris, a city my husband and I have visited many times. The travel article happily coincided with Charles Fleming's article "Travel in the Time of Euros" in the Opinion section. Both gentlemen made our Sunday more enjoyable. Christine Ducey, Oceanside WWII Museum is a must-see David Freed's article about the National World War II Museum was excellent ["Lest We Forget," Aug. 15]

By the end of next year, the Transportation Security Administration hopes to have nearly 1,000 full-body scanners to screen passengers at airports across the country. Two are already operational at Los Angeles International Airport. But a group of doctors and professors from UC San Francisco are raising new concerns about the safety of the technology in one type of full-body scanner built by Torrance-based Rapiscan Inc. To reveal weapons hidden under a traveler's clothes, the scanner relies on "backscatter technology," which uses the ricochets from low-level X-rays to create what looks like a nude image of the person.

Two years ago, Gary Kelly drew a competitive line in the sand when he decided not to charge passengers for their bags. The 55-year-old chief executive of Southwest Airlines Co. didn't want employees to face customer wrath for an issue that would have gone against the essence of Southwest. "We had our niche for a long time," Kelly said in his headquarters office at Love Field in Dallas. "We were the low-cost carrier, the low-fare carrier. Nobody paid much attention to us. Well, that ain't the case anymore."

Two years ago, Gary Kelly drew a competitive line in the sand when he decided not to charge passengers for their bags. The 55-year-old chief executive of Southwest Airlines Co. didn't want employees to face customer wrath for an issue that would have gone against the essence of Southwest. "We had our niche for a long time," Kelly said in his headquarters office at Love Field in Dallas. "We were the low-cost carrier, the low-fare carrier. Nobody paid much attention to us. Well, that ain't the case anymore."

The U.S. Department of Transportation imposed a $200,000 fine Tuesday against Southwest Airlines for "bumping" ticketed passengers from flights without following federal guidelines. Under federal law, an airline that denies a seat to a passenger holding a ticket because a flight is overbooked must offer the passenger a voucher for another flight or cash compensation, or both, depending on the circumstances. But an investigation found that on "numerous instances" in 2009 Southwest either failed to pay bumped passengers the appropriate amount or failed to inform them that they were entitled to cash instead of a voucher, the agency said in a statement.

Southwest Airlines, which accounts for two-thirds of passenger traffic at Burbank's Bob Hope Airport, will phase out 12% of its weekly flights by September, airport officials said. The carrier's decision to trim 82 flights from its weekly schedule is expected to further decrease already-declining passenger numbers at the commuter hub. The drop from 712 to 630 weekly flights will mean a 6% reduction in total flights leaving the airport. The Burbank-Glendale-Pasadena Airport Authority presented the proposal last week to airport commissioners.