“Approval from the European Commission is another important step toward completing our merger with United,” said Jeff Smisek, Continental’s chairman, president and CEO, in a press release. “The combination of United and Continental brings together the two most complementary networks of any U.S. carriers, with minimal domestic and no international route overlaps. Together we will offer customers unparalleled global access.”

Groups like the European Commission are often worried that a merger like the one Continental and United have proposed will lead to higher ticket prices and fewer options for travelers. It could have put a number of restrictions on the airlines, which hope to complete the merger by the end of the year.

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One page, one giant list of discounted airfares. This is why we like the JetBlue website, it's easy and full of ideas.

Attack, Attack, Attack.)

That’s the mantra JetBlue has taken now that nearly every other airline has started offering tickets at super discounted prices.

For travelers, that means discounts for you. Just go here and check out JetBlue’s Giant Wall of Savings.

There are tickets from Long Beach to San Francisco for $49, Portland to Long Beach for $59, New York City to Barbados for $99.

You have to book the tickets by July 30 and fly between September 7 and December 15.

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But there are drawbacks.

Walking into the airport without a paper boarding pass is unnerving. The habit of having a ticket is overwhelming. Every time I would tap my hand on my bag to assure myself that my ticket was there, it wasn’t. It was on my phone.

Then there is that slight paranoid panic attack that comes as you get into the security line. What if my phone battery goes dead? What if the internet connection fails and I can’t pull up the little digital image that so doesn’t look like a ticket.

But there’s something so modern and Planet friendly about keeping your ticket on your cell phone. You no longer have to worry about losing that little piece of paper. It’s not like it was put in a scrap book anymore.

Plus, there’s that additional smugness to helping the environment and being just a touch greener than all of those dead tree passengers.

So there I am, walking up to the TSA — in fact, cutting in line at the TSA, using the business class line where the E-ticket reader is. Security will let you right through, you’re modern and chic and most security don’t know how to read the digital ticket, they have a machine for that.

However, in Detroit, so few people actually use the digital ticket that the machine doesn’t work. Instead of skipping to the front of the line, I got to wait at the front of the line. The dead battery on the phone reader meant I had to wait for the TSA agent to figure out it didn’t work.

Then he had to call someone on his radio — which apparently is no one.

“Sir, it’ll just be a moment before we can get a new battery in it.”

Ten minutes later, I was still standing there watching the agent draw little blue lines on paper tickets as passengers walk by me, grabbing their little plastic bins and take off their shoes.

Ten more minutes later.

“Why can’t you just look at the information on there and let me through?”

“Because the machine has to read it. Don’t you have a back up?”

“A backup?” I ask.

“Yeah, a print out of your ticket.”

Finally, a TSA agent came out behind the steel curtain with a battery pack and then attempted to figure out how to put it on. Five minutes later, the card reader was ready — and I was on my way again. The planet still helped just a little but all of my smugness replaced with a little more disdain.

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The summer travel season is drawing to an end — and now airlines need to bolster profits for the year with that last quarter.

While fares are bound to jump come Thanksgiving and then ride high all through way through the New Year, that opens up three excellent months to travel: September, October and the beginning of November.

For the savvy traveler, that means booking something now. JetBlue, which can fly you into the Caribbean and even South America, has a ton of round trip tickets for very low prices such as a ticket from Orlando to Bogota for $238.

Not to be outdone, American Airlines has a slew of low priced tickets as well — as long as you’re traveling before November 17 — see, you thought we were making up that travel tip.

American has $49 tickets from LA to Vegas, $169 tickets from San Francisco to Hawaii and loads of other cheap tickets.

Deals aren’t likely to get much better than this for the rest of the year — so if you haven’t gone anywhere yet this year, it’s time to start thinking about where else you can go.

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The study, which was paid for by aviation consultants, says the new law hurts consumers instead of helping them because more flights were canceled in May 2010 than in 2009.

Naturally, DOT thinks this is just not true, as Congress would never pass a law that hurts consumers under the guise of helping consumers. So first it blasts the fact the authors are airline consultants and then blasts the study.

“Airlines know the rules and they know they have to take passenger protections into account when making scheduling and operational decisions,” said Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood. “The Department of Transportation is committed to protecting the rights of airline passengers — starting with firm limits on tarmac delays — and no one should be misled by this  unreliable study.”

The “unreliable” part of the study is that the study only looked at one month of data — in part because there was only one month of data available since the law was passed. In that small sample, cancellations jumped 30 percent in May compared to the same month in 2009.

The DOT called this a “slight” increase and noted that when you manipulate the data — something the consultants should have done to provide results more favorable to the DOT, cancellations are actually down. (We’re not making this up,) this is what the DOT says:

“While there was a slight increase in airline cancellations in May 2010 compared with May 2009, an analysis of May cancellations over the last 15 years shows that cancellations in May 2010 were below average. In fact, the rate of airline cancellations in May 2010 was below the average rate for all 15 previous Mays with comparable data: 1.24% in May 2010 compared to the average of 1.51%.”

In fairness to the DOT, tarmac delays are down significantly during May, as thousands of fewer passengers have been stuck on the runway. Instead, they were back in the terminal trying to reschedule their canceled flight. The DOT doesn’t count that — but we’re sure, if it can figure out a way to find more favorable math, it will — changing a potential minus into a plus.

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Virgin America has announced changes to its in-flight menu — after all, you should always serve what’s in season.

Virgin has released its new menu to get people who fly on other airlines mouths to water. (There’s a reason Virgin won the Best Domestic Airline for Food in Travel + Liesure 2009 Worlds’ Best Awards.)

So what’s cooking? We could go into fancy prose at this point, but instead, we’ll just show you the menu, that speaks volumes and then think about what you had to eat on your last flight.

First Class Breakfast

• Fresh baked sweet cranberry walnut bread served with sweet creamy butter.

• Fresh summer fruit with candied kumquats, pomegranate and vanilla yogurt.

• Chorizo sausage, potato and egg omelet.

• Fresh herb omelet: Farm fresh egg omelet filled with goat cheese and ratatouille of zucchini, yellow squash, fresh herbs, garlic and vine ripened tomatoes served with a tangy tomato wine sauce.

• Baked eggplant, zucchini and egg frittata.

First Class Lunch and Dinner

• Andalusian gazpacho with crostini.

• Baby beet salad with oranges and arugula.

• Pork tenderloin with a guava smear, port wine figs & saffron spaetzle, horseradish oil.

• Roasted vegetable lasagna with garlic cheese toas.

• Grilled pork charmoula with crisp eggplant with ricotta, pomegranate molasses and papaya relish.

• Roasted eggplant, tomato and artichoke tart with polenta and wild mushroom mac-n-cheese.

• Wellington of home-style meatloaf with prosciutto, wild mushrooms, panache of fresh vegetables and sauce cabernet.

• Vegetable eggplant moussaka.

• Fresh Fruit & berries with passion fruit sabayon.

• Butterscotch pudding with vanilla bourbon mascarpone.

• Redeye fruit and half sandwich: Selection of Hand cut artisan cheeses of Brie, aged white cheddar, and smoked Gouda, garnished with baby frisée  lettuce, quince, raspberries, blackberries and a delicate macaroon pastry, served with a half sandwich.

Now the main cabin (aka coach on other airlines) may not have all quite the menu, but there are still some tasty choices.

• Granola with fresh fruit and yogurt: Build your own yogurt parfait with 18 Rabbits pecan, almond, maple granola, fresh pineapple, kiwi, oranges, red seedless grapes, and strawberry and fresh fruit yogurt.

• Vegetables and Cheese.

• Pastrami sandwich with swiss on russian rye.

• Turkey, cranberry and brie.

• Grilled veggie sandwich with goat cheese and basil.

Virgin America has also added a few new cocktails.

• Tequila Tea: Hornitos Reposado 100% Blue Agave Tequila + Honest Tea
• Sweet Tree: VeeV Acai Spirit + Cranapple Juice
• Grandma’s Coffee: illy issimo Iced Cappuccino + Whiskey
• Rouge Sunset: Karma Sparkling Wine + Cranapple Juice
• Mile High-Tini: illy issimo Iced Cappuccino + Vodka

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The big beauty of a bird will be on display for Monday and Tuesday at the Farnborough Air Show and then will pack up and head back to its homebase.

People checking out this Big Bird should look at things like the dimmable window shades, the giant overhead bins and other things included inside to make travel a little more comfortable.

The 787, which is made of composite and other light weight materials, gets about 20 percent better fuel economy and is one of the most anticipated planes to enter the air fleet. It can carry more people and stuff than anything in the sky right now.

What we want next to ride in it.

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Please don't put me in the cargo hull, I might die.

If your dog has a long face, he’s got something to smile about.

A recent Department of Transportation study of dog dying on airplanes since 2005 suggest that “short faced dogs” such as pugs and bulldogs are much more likely to die in the cargo hold of a plane than other dogs.

Here’s how the DOT broke the numbers down:

All told, 122 dogs died during transportation over the past five years — a number that the DOT says “far exceeds” the number of other deaths of pets, which totaled 22. Out of all the dogs that died — almost half were short faced breeds, which was a disproportionate amount of deaths.

Thus, the DOT concluded, if you have a short faced breed, you may want to think twice before loading up the pooch in crate and tossing it onto a plane. Check out the report here.

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Oh, no. It’s finally happening. An air marshal was about to sit next to me.

Stay cool, don’t talk, just smile.

I have this self-diagnosed, inappropriate response disorder where I start spewing out things I know I shouldn’t be saying under awkward or trying circumstances, like the time I asked an amputee in the grocery store if I could offer him a hand, or told my friend at her father’s funeral that things could be worse. That sort of thing.

He took his seat and got settled.

“Hi. Alex.” He extended his hand. I could read my Miranda Rights in his eyes. I was screwed.

“Gayle.” I shook his hand.

“Business or pleasure?” he asked.

“I’m visiting a friend to go see the Rush concert. You?”

“You like Rush?” He seemed genuinely shocked.

“Yeah. Big fan. You?”

“I used to get high all the time to Rush,” he said.

I nodded. If this guy was an air marshal, he was divulging way too much information.

“I’m on my way back from a business trip to D.C. I own my own construction company.”

“So, you’re not an air marshal?”

He laughed. “No. But even if I was, I wouldn’t tell you.”

Good point. I checked out his hands: rough, calloused, with permanent dirt under the nails. I should have known.

“What do you do?” he asked.

“I’m a writer, or at least I string words along to form sentences,” I said.

“So, you can help me out then,” he said. “Where’s the best place to meet women?”

I had the feeling he would have asked me relationship advice even if I told him I stuffed dead animals for a living.

I thought for a second. “I would say Lowe’s or Home Depot.”

“Really?”

No. What the hell would I know about today’s dating scene? My husband proposed to me by letter penned with an ink-stained quill feather sent via carrier pigeon back in the days of wick lamps and bonnets.

“Well,” I said, “it’s better than the food store, and you’re probably at Home Depot a lot anyway, right?”

“That’s a great idea,” he said. “It’s just been so hard to find the right girl, you know?”

Nope. Picking up chicks in hardware just wasn’t my thing.

He went on for the next hour to tell me that he’d been divorced for four years now, had suffered a severe bout of depression after his wife left him, lost the house he built with his own hands to foreclosure, and didn’t get to see his two daughters much because they lived with his ex-wife in Austria. And that was the happy stuff.

Thank God I left that jagged piece of glass at home.

“I figured it would be easier now to find someone, with all those social networking and dating sites,” I said.

“Yeah, I mean, it’s more numbers, but less quality,” he said. “Plus, you never know who you’re really getting—fake profiles, pictures from like 10 years ago. I’ve met some crazy-ass chicks online, man.” He proceeded to list the name and neurosis of each woman he’d dated since his divorce: Linda (psycho); Lisa (crazy); Sara (hot as hell, but not worth the trouble); Jill (still in love with her, sort of, but not dating for reasons unclear).

Bob the Builder was coming fully unhinged, and all I wanted was some morphine and a sandwich.

He pointed to my ring finger. “Let me tell you—stay married as long as you can. It’s brutal out there. And whatever you do, don’t make babies with foreigners. I mean, you can have sex with them, but just don’t have kids.”

Foreign sex, OK. Procreation, bad. Maybe it was the thin air or a case of Stockholm syndrome, but he was starting to make sense. We had to land before he began a five-alarm crying jag or proposed to the cougar-granny flight attendant.

The lights below grew closer with each passing second, our descent into ABQ finally underway.

“Well, good luck dating,” I offered. “I hope you meet someone at Lowe’s.”

“Yeah, thanks. Have a good time with your friend at the concert,” he said. “And if you meet Geddy Lee backstage, tell him I say hi.”

I’ll make sure to leave out all the dating tips.

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If we were Bing, we’d have a little arrows pointing up.

SmarterTraveler.com has a pretty comprehensive look at the deals available from various airlines. Click here to take a look by airline. (Their staff — something HTG hopes to have some day — has scoured through and tried to find the best deals out there and seems to have done a pretty good job. There are $88 Delta tickets, $44 tickets from AirTrans, $40 JetBlue tickets and lots of other deals.)

Of course, you’re welcome to check for yourself at American, AirTran, Continental, Delta, Frontier, JetBlue, United, and US Airways. Also, don’t over look overseas flights which are included in a lot of big savings too.

If this is war, it smells like victory.

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