Airlines

The USPS is still running in the red, and facing an $18.2 billion annual deficit as early as 2015, The Postal Service's solution in a nutshell: Give customers worse service, and charge them more for it. Where have we heard this before? (Hint: the airline industry.)

Holiday air travelers getting ready to head to the airports may want to prepare for long delays. But government fines for keeping you waiting too long may lead some airlines to just cancel some flights instead.

Now that summer is nearly over, you can start planning for next year's big vacation by racking up airline miles. We spoke with one expert who scored 250,000 miles in a 12-month period by opening just three cards. But his strategy isn't for everyone.

Take me up to the ball game -- thanks to a new offering from broadband provider Row 44, baseball fanatics won't have to miss one tobacco spit or big hit while flying, because Major League Baseball will stream games to airline passengers' WiFi devices.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index's annual report on airlines showed Southwest still on top of the rankings, and far ahead of No. 2 Continental. Southwest even improved its score, a rare bright spot in an industry that came in last overall in customer satisfaction among those the ACSI rates.

As a new week begins on Wall Street, nobody wants bank stocks, J.P. Morgan Chase hints at changes at the top, OPEC ministers tussle over crude, and airlines are in for some financial turbulence. In fact, the only good news is for France, which apparently won't lose the IMF over the DSK scandal.

Just over a year after the ash cloud from the Eyjafjallajokull volcano caused an expensive and chaotic shutdown of air travel across much of Europe, an different volcano in Iceland, Grimsvoetn, is erupting.

After years of growth, private business aviation went into a steep nosedive in 2008. Over the past year, the industry has made a comeback, but does its double-digit growth signal a sunny future for the aircraft industry alone, or is it a sign of brighter days ahead for the economy in general?

Airfares are still on the rise, and the experts don't expect them to descend any time soon. But if you're flexible, sociable and Web-savvy, you could still land a bargain deal on a flight this summer.

The next time you book a flight with a connection, keep your cellphone handy with the ringer as loud as it%u2019ll go %u2014 you could get a call for a cheap up-sell on a direct fare.