Baggage

I booked my family of four on an Alaska Airlines flight operated by American Airlines. Alaska does not charge for checking the first bag, but American did charge me ($120 total). Alaska has washed its hands of these charges. Can you help? Let 2008 go down as the year we finally learned to listen to the alarm bells that go off in our heads when we hear: * "Affording that house? Piece o' cake. We have a great rate that will let you live your dream." * "I'm sure it's a fantastic investment.

MIAMI - The Ravens insist that revenge wasn't foremost on their minds yesterday when they returned to the site where last season hit rock bottom. "We've had enough drama this year leading into this," Terrell Suggs pointed out. Still, that disaster in December at Dolphin Stadium - the first and only win by miserable Miami in 2007, and No. 8 in the Ravens' own nine-game skid - is the perfect way to measure where the current version of the team is. The...

YOU'VE HEARD about the $15 fee that American Airlines begins charging later this month for your first checked bag and you're determined to avoid paying. Instead, you'll just cram so much into your carry-on luggage that the airline will wish it never dared you to bring it on. Stop. Take deep breaths. Now let's start again. Isn't this a great opportunity to lighten your load? To travel as freely as you've always wanted? Even if American ends up doing away with the new fees because other carriers are too smart to follow their lead, this could be the moment you've been waiting for to get rid of some excess baggage.

LONDON -- For the second successive day, British Airways canceled dozens of flights at Heathrow's glittery new Terminal Five as its staff struggled with state-of-the-art technology supposed to hasten check-in procedures and make flying a pleasure. The hitches since the terminal opened to paying passengers Thursday were "definitely not British Airways' finest hour," the airline's chief executive, Willie Walsh, told reporters as he offered a personal, public apology for disrupting the travel plans of thousands of people.

4Q decline is under 1% Maryland home prices fell at the end of the year, the first dip into negative territory since 1995, according to new government figures. Prices in the state dropped just under 1 percent in the final three months of 2007, compared with fourth quarter of 2006. The conditions for sellers worsened as the year progressed. Utility disputes `windfall' Part of the settlement that was designed to open the state's electricity market to competition could turn into a "billion-dollar windfall" for the Baltimore Gas and Electric Co.'s parent - one paid for by the utility's customers, regulators said.

State aviation officials have tentatively hired a contractor to build a new baggage system at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport that could allow AirTran Airways, the airport's second leading carrier, to double its daily departures. The two-year, $32 million project at Terminal D would begin later this spring if approved by the state Board of Public Works. It would triple both the size of the baggage screening area and the rate at which bags are processed as creaky conveyor belts are replaced, BWI spokesman Jonathan Dean said.

Allan Hirsch flies several times a year, sometimes for work and sometimes for fun. Almost always, he checks a bag. In the past, he has always felt relatively secure about handing his belongings over to the airlines. "I have always been under the assumption that they are responsible for the luggage once they take control of it and give you a luggage receipt," said Hirsch, a 59-year-old sales rep. "By accepting my luggage, they are taking responsibility for its care." Boy, was he ever wrong.

After six years of rapid growth at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, AirTran Airways is running into head winds that threaten its expansion here. The low-cost airline grew exponentially after snatching up its first gate at BWI as US Airways retreated in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks. With its headquarters in Orlando, Fla., and hub in Atlanta, AirTran found the coveted Mid-Atlantic center it had lacked. It has since swelled to become BWI's second-largest carrier, flying nearly 2.5 million passengers last year non-stop to and from cities such as Boston and Atlanta, now even Seattle and Portland, Maine - routes that behemoth Southwest Airlines doesn't have.

United Airlines will begin charging some passengers $50 to check a second piece of luggage on domestic round-trip flights, becoming the first big carrier to impose a fee for a service that has long been included in the price of a ticket. As of late yesterday, no other major carrier had followed United, but some analysts said that if the move didn't generate significant resistance from consumers, the traditional two-free-bags rule was likely to go the way of other services such as free meals and pillows.

Dave Jaffe won my friends' annual guys-only vacation competition this year. The five of us each pitch a destination, cajoling, using brochures -- and rarely common sense -- to persuade the others to vote our way. Frankly, the rest of us would have preferred to sail in the Virgin Islands, feet up, sipping Sam Adams and cracking open lobsters. But Jaffe was persuasive. And, how bad could it be, we figured, hiking for three days in the beautiful Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico? And with a string of llamas carrying our loads, no less.