I always figured that fares from AUS to the Los Angeles area were about the same. Today, booking a trip for next week, full fare, I found that BUR was 128 clams more than me flying from AUS to LAX. Fares to ONT and SNA were even higher. So LAX and back it is.

On another fare note, I started to book a trip from Austin to Springfield MO, more than 30 days out. AA and others are about 900 pesos r/t. My client suggested I look at Tulsa [also looked at MCI and LIT]. Tulsa is closest. Today's one-way fare is about $74. The drive is about 2.5 hours.

Until today I never thought about flying to an offline airport, but like our border collie, SWA is doing a pretty good job of herding me.

And thanks to SWA for holding the plane for the dozen of us that were connecting at DAL heading to STL this week. When the flight attendant says "We are coming into gate 14, the LIT pax need to hoof it down to gate 10 and they are holding the plane for you, and the STL pax need to go to gate 9 and they are holding the plane for you" I put pretty good faith in that.

Different from what I have heard from other profit-challenged airlines where the promise is sometimes empty.