Delta has announced a new frequent flyer mile chart, but Is this a good news, bad news story?

Delta is now charging up to 60,000 miles round-trip for a domestic coach frequent flyer ticket, but spending those miles will get you the "last seat on the plane" free of capacity controls. The airline also has the standard 25,000 mile award level and a new 40,000 mile award level. This seems like another way of squeezing more miles out of its frequent flyer members.

First class domestic will cost between 45,000 and 100,000 miles roundtrip. These mileage levels apply to the 48 states plus Alaska, and Canada. Hawaii will cost you between 45,000 and 90,000 miles for coach and between 75,000 and 180,000 miles in premium cabins. Sounds like frequent flyer mileage inflation to us.

Oh, and we thought this was very interesting: Micheline Maynard, writing in Thursday's New York Times, quotes a Delta frequent flyer program spokesperson who notes that the number of miles issued by Delta had grown by 24 percent from 2004 to 2007, but the number of frequent flyer seats has not grown. "The capacity is just not there," he says. That means it's 24 percent harder to find a free seat.

Speaking of inflation, check out American's new higher mileage requirements.

Delta, which will soon be the world's largest airline (after it merges with Northwest) has increased baggage fees once more. Although the first checked bag is still free, a second will now cost $50 up from the previous $25 (that's assuming that it's not overweigh or oversized, in which case additional fees kick in). In addition, a third checked bag now costs $125 up from $80 and a bag weighing 51 to 70 pounds will cost an additional $90, up from $80. Delta claims that less than a fifth of its passengers check a second bag, and remember that these policies only apply to domestic flights.

Oh, and we thought this was very interesting: Micheline Maynard, writing in Thursday's New York Times, quotes a Delta frequent flyer program spokesperson who notes that the number of miles issued by Delta had grown by 24 percent from 2004 to 2007, but the number of frequent flyer seats has not grown. "The capacity is just not there," he says. How refreshingly honest. That means it's 24 percent harder to find a free seat.

We're assuming that when the merger takes place, these higher Delta fees will supplant Northwest's baggage fees. If you haven't already, take a look at our updated baggage fees chart.

We say it time and time again: you'll save money if you use a flexible date search. Choose to fly on the days and during the months when the airlines aren't as busy, and they'll give you a bargain. Yes, it's hard to believe that before airline deregulation, there were just 4 classes of fares--Y coach, F first class, YN night coach, and FN first class night--and it didn't matter when you flew. But now, it does matter when you fly, because the airlines are free to practice what they call yield management (charge higher fares for high demand travel dates, low fares for low demand ones). Usually, traveling on a Tuesday or Wednesday will yield the lowest fares (that doesn't mean that buying fares on a Tuesday or Wednesday will save you money.)

So here are some examples. All of these fares were found within a few minutes of each other on the same day and on the same airlines, using Travelocity's flexible date search and Travelocity's exact date search. Exact dates were chosen at random.

To learn more about flexible date search, please see our handy chart.

Example 1: Providence to Las Vegas in August

$236.50 including taxes using flexible date search)

or $369 RT including taxes not using flexible date search

Example 2: Santa Ana/Orange County to Orlando in August

$253.50 RT including taxes using flexible date search

or $356 RT including taxes not using flexible date search

Example 3: Atlanta to Denver in August/September

$286 RT including taxes using flexible date search

or Atlanta to Denver $451 RT including taxes not using flexible date search

Well, it looks like it really might happen: American will pull their fares from Kayak.com (and sister site Sidestep.com), as Sean O'Neill reports on BudgetTravel.com. Interestingly, the two US airlines that only sell their fares on their own sites, Southwest and Allegiant, are the only two that are making profits, as Jared Blank of Online Travel Review, points reports.

Why is this happening? Kayak's CEO claims that, "American asked us to suppress search results from competing websites as a condition to displaying their fares. This is simply not something that Kayak will do. Imagine Sony telling Best Buy that they couldn’t sell Panasonic?"

Shades of Southwest pulling out of Travelocity.com oh so many years ago?

Is this a sign of things to come? As we've pointed out before, American already offers big discounts to those signing up for its DealFinder service, whose fares are only available on AA.com. These days, airline travel sites sell more than airfares. They also sell merchandise, hotels, rental cars, and package deals. And they market their frequent flyer programs and other products. So doesn't it make sense to lure consumers to their own sites, rather than going through middlemen (online travel agencies) to whom they also have to pay commissions?

Much has been written about something called Rule 240. Some pundits claim it’s an “urban travel legend” and no longer exists. Others disagree.

What is Rule 240? Well, back in the days when airlines were regulated by a government agency, they all had to abide by some sensible rules to protect passengers in case of, among other things, a cancellation or misconnection that was within the airline’s control. These rules were incorporated in the airlines’ contracts of carriage. Post-deregulation, these rules no longer had to be followed, but some airlines, whether formed after or before deregulation, perhaps because they were too lazy to completely rewrite their contracts, kept the same rules. Airlines formed after deregulation typically didn’t incorporate these rules into their contracts, and some have done away with them.

Anyway, Rule 240 originally stated that in the event of a cancellation or flight misconnection, the airline would have to put you on their next flight out, or, if that wasn’t “acceptable,” on the next flight out of a competing airline if that flight would get you to your destination sooner, all at no additional cost to you. If only first class was available on the other airline, then they had to upgrade you. This only applied in circumstances under the airlines’ control, such as crew failing to show up, or mechanical problems.

So does Rule 240, or something like it, still exist? Well, we searched the contracts of carriage for a bunch of big and smaller airlines to find out, and near as we can see, several airlines, such as Northwest, still have something they call Rule 240, and others, such as Delta, Southwest, and Virgin America, have more vague language saying that they will put you on another airline at their “sole discretion” or that they “may substitute alternate carriers.” And some airlines don’t call it Rule 240 at all, instead using a numbering system of their own invention.

Keep in mind that airlines can change their contracts at any time, and several of the larger ones have done so in recent months. And sometimes there isn’t a flight on another airline that will get you there sooner, especially if you’re traveling from or through a so-called “fortress hub,” such as Minneapolis, which is a Northwest Airlines stronghold, or there may be no seats available on the other airline’s next flight. Also, if you're traveling on a "bulk," "consolidator," or other unpublished airfare, then all bets are off.

To address the skeptics, in the chart below we’ve done our best to interpret the airlines’ policies, and have excerpted the actual language from their current (as of December 2009) contracts of carriage, which, although we're travel journalists not lawyers, we assume are legally binding documents. Below the chart, we’ve also provided links to the contracts on the airlines’ Web sites so you can see for yourself.

We've noted whether, near as we can tell, the airline will put you in first class on its own (or another carrier's) next flight out.

Rule 240 (or something like it) by airline

Links to contracts of carriage

AirTran
Alaska
American
Continental
Delta
Frontier
Hawaiian
Jetblue
Northwest
Southwest
United
US Airways
Virgin America

And if you're traveling within or from any member country of the European Union, you're protected by an additional set of rights that are even stronger than those in the airlines' domestic contracts of carriage or those issued by the US government:

See: Passenger Rights in the European Union.

Read our other useful charts

In case you missed them, these consumer-oriented charts have a lot of useful information:

The flexible search chart

The ship your luggage by UPS or FedEx ground chart
(very useful comments from readers)

The don't buy insurance from your airline chart

The cash back credit card chart

The frequent flyer fee chart

The constantly updated airline baggage fee chart

and The "other" airline fee chart

With fares going higher, and low fare seats getting scarcer, there is no better time than now to brush up on your flexible date search skills. If you don't particularly care when you fly as long as there's a cheap fare, flexible is the way to go.

To help you, we've put together this nifty chart (we're all about charticles these days, have you noticed?) and some important tips to help you distinguish between the various Web sites offering flex search.

Most sites let you search only over a 30 day period of your choice, both for the outward bound and the return flight (these include Cheaptickets, Hotwire, and Orbitz). Allegiant and Southwest, however, allow you to search over one 30 day period on the outbound and any other on the return. Then there are Travelocity and Cheapair, both of which allow a 330 day search. Only problem is, they're not very good at guaranteeing that there will be seats available at the fares initially shown in the search, whereas the other sites do a better job at this (the reason is that these searches take up a lot of computer processing power, and you can't have it both ways: a long date range  search, or better seat availability predictions).

And there are other distinctions between search sites, as the chart below shows. Some do one-way searches, others don't; most allow you to search for more than one seat, Travelocity doesn't; some do searches on routes from the US and Canada to international destinations (even if they say they don't); and others do not. And some charge fees, others give you a free ride (many online travel agencies have suspended booking fees through May 31, 2009).

Alaska Airlines in July (2008) added a nice 30 day search; and American has had a 31 day search for quite a while, as has Southwest. But most airlines are limited in their flexible date searches, which is a shame.

That's the rumor, anyway. For quite a while, AA has been enticing travelers to buy tickets only on its own site, aa.com, with its DealFinder widget, which offers 10 to 30% off on various routes with the use of promo codes.

According to this blog post, cash-crunched American no longer wants to pay double booking fees to both Kayak and Orbitz (fares found on American via Kayak are sent not to aa.com but to Orbitz.com for booking).

Southwest, of course, already does very nicely by not listing on Kayak or any other site. So perhaps American is thinking, hey, why can't we go it alone too?

Alaska Airlines joins the small club of airline web sites with a 30-day flexible date search (see how it works). American has a 31-day search (domestic roundtrips only) and Southwest has their "ShortCut" which allows you to search any 30 day period outbound and any other 30 day period on the return. But most airline sites just do a 1 to 3 day flexible date search, if they offer it at all.

Alaska's new product allows you to:

• View an entire month of fares for your chosen destination(s) and see the lowest fare available for each day of the month
• View lowest fares for both outbound and return flights
• Filter your search to only display First Class fares
• View your total fare in an easy-to-use Trip Summary table

However, for fares to Mexico, the search range is only 3 days.

There are still lots of low fares out there, but increasingly you have to be extra flexble in your travel dates to nab them. So kudos to Alaska for making it easier to do so.

Big changes at United Airlines and it'll hit you right in your pocketbook:

• Laying off 7000 workers
• Cutting domestic seat capacity 15.5 to 16.5 percent
• Retiring 100 jets

Read the press release to see what else they're up to.