Delta Offers Winter Weather Travel Assistance to Customers in Minnesota

Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) is offering customers whose flight plans may be affected by winter weather expected tomorrow and Saturday in Minnesota the ability to make one-time changes to their travel schedules without cost. Delta's weather advisory encourages customers to consider postponing or re-routing their travel to avoid possible inconvenience from expected flight delays.

Customers booked on Delta-ticketed flights Dec. 31, 2010 and Jan. 1, 2011 to, from or through Minnesota may immediately rebook for travel before or after their original travel dates as long as new flights are ticketed and rescheduled travel starts by Jan. 3, 2011.

Flight delays are possible at Minnesota airports, including Delta's hub at Minneapolis-St. Paul, as a result of winter weather conditions, and flight schedules may be proactively reduced to minimize delays.

American Airlines says bookings up despite loss of Orbitz

American Airlines Inc. said Wednesday it is booking more tickets now than at this time previous year despite having its fares removed from one major online travel agency and made harder to find on a second.

Orbitz.com stopped selling tickets on the Fort Worth-based carrier Dec. 21 after the two failed to reach terms on a latest distribution agreement. Two days later, Expedia.com changed its search results to give American's flights less prominence when customers hunted for fares.

Nevertheless, the carrier said it has seen a raise in bookings from its own website, aa.com, and from other online travel agencies such as Priceline.com and "metasearch" online travel agencies such as Kayak.com that hunt across a variety of search sites to compile fare results.

Delta and American Pull Information from Travel Sites

The battle between airlines and travel sites is starting to heat up, but for different issue.

The relationship between airline and secondary travel sites is interesting. Most have a relationship like travel agents used to, where the site will get a referral fee for making the booking. However any extra money made from hotels or cars is kept by the outside site.

Back in October 2008, American Airlines went to battle with Kayak.com. Kayak.com is pretty darn cool and I don't mind giving them a plug. You are able to say where and when you want to go someplace and they will compare fares. They will also let you know if the cheapest fare is on the airline's website (which I find it almost always is) or on another site like Orbitz or Expedia. Kayak doesn't actually sell you anything, but just refers you to another site to make the actual purchase. Back in 2008, American was not happy since they wanted Kayak to only link to their site and not to third party sites like Orbitz, Expedia, etc for comparison. It appears that American won, since their site is the only one listed under American fares on Kayak.

AirTran cuts cancellation penalty for Northeast travelers

Travelers whose travel plans were altered by snowstorms in the Northeast will be able to change their reservations without the customary $75 penalty.

That includes affected flights in and out of Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. AirTran is BWI’s second biggest carrier behind Southwest Airlines.

Passengers whose flights to or from cities in the Northeast affected by the winter weather system have an additional 14 days past their real travel date to book an alternate flight. The extension applies to passengers with booked travel between Dec. 27 and Dec. 30, according to a news release.

Sony to Spend $1.2 Billion for Image Sensor Capacity

Sony Corp. will invest 100 billion yen ($1.2 billion) over the next fiscal year to twice its production capacity for image sensors, as the company aims to expand output of the devices used in smartphones.

The maker of Cyber-shot cameras will buy back from Toshiba Corp. a factory making chips used in PlayStation 3 game consoles and convert the plant into an image-sensor production facility, Tokyo-based Sony said today in a statement. The company also plans to include equipment to an existing plant in Nagasaki, western Japan, to make high-quality image sensors, it said.

The investment follows a plan by Sony, disclosed in September, to spend 40 billion yen to boost output of so-called CMOS chips at a factory in Kumamoto prefecture. Japan’s largest exporter of consumer electronics aims to win a 30 percent share of shipments in the market for image sensors used in cell phones, compared with about 10 percent for the year ending March 2011, Yoko Yasukochi, a Sony spokeswoman, said by phone today.

American Airlines pulls fare data from Orbitz site

American Airlines on Tuesday yanked all of its airfares from Orbitz Worldwide Inc., severing ties with the online travel giant that the carrier formed a decade back with United and other leading airlines.

Chicago-based Orbitz stopped selling tickets for travel on American and American Eagle flights after a Cook County Circuit Court judge allowed the nation's No. 3 airline to stop contracts amid a dispute with the online travel agency and its corporate parent, Travelport.

Snow continues to cause Europe travel chaos

Snow and nasty weather conditions continued to blast Europe, stalling train travel and extending the nightmare for many trying to travel by road and air.

Heavy snow halted all plane travel at the Frankfurt airport in Germany Tuesday for a short time, said Thomas Uber, an airport spokesman.

"The problem is that we clear a runway and right after the snowplow has gone over it, it is full of snow once more because there is so much coming down," Uber said.