When it's backed into a financial corner, what's an airline to do? Gas prices are saner now, but they won't give our money back for the fuel surcharges because now they're using that cash to plug mortal wounds. Americans have grudgingly accepted the implementation of luggage fees, too. As consumers, we've all been led down the primrose path with the airlines, and they're finding that we're actually pretty compliant when it comes to these extra charges.

So why not try out a hefty optional one? United Airlines has partnered with FedEx to sell passengers door-to-door overnight delivery of your luggage. FedEx retrieves your luggage from your house, preferably the day before your flight, and you pick it up the next day at your destination, such as a hotel or at a specified address. The one-way price deviates from the usual FedEx rate scheme: $149 for flights under 1,000 miles and $179 for longer flights. As always, without this splurge fee, your stuff can travel in the cargo hold just below your feet for $15 each way for the first bag and $50 each way for each second bag.

Marketing-wise, I'm not sure what the message is here. With this new optional charge, United seems to be tacitly acknowledging that you might be better off entrusting your valuables to someone else. Is United admitting that paying ten times the usual price is the only way to make sure your bag actually makes it to your destination? Like the cruise lines' efforts to offer premium restaurants on its ships, United seems to be saying that its usual service isn't good enough. And it's not like the lack of a bag will speed your passage through security in any meaningful way, because you can only move through it as quickly as the person in front of you.

So you buy an airfare at a ridiculous price -- or even a good one. And a week later, the airline decides it hasn't sold enough seats. Rather than fly an empty plane, which would cost it money, it slashes the prices on seats. Come the day of the flight, you turn to the person sitting next to you and learn, to your disgust, that they paid $200 less than you did.

What can you do? Well, by the time you're on the flight, often nothing. But if you discover you've paid more than you had to before you have used the ticket, you can usually petition the airline for the price difference. Usually, that refund comes in the form of a voucher that you use for future travel, but that's still money you don't have to spend later on.

But, surprise! Some airlines have a nasty trick up their sleeve. Many charge obscene change fees since, the way they see it, they have to pull your old ticket and issue a new one to give you the better price. That means that for domestic flights on U.S. Airways, Continental, and American, the price has to drop by more than $150 in order to give you an ultimate benefit. But plenty of other airlines don't charge any fee at all (JetBlue, Alaska, United), or their fee is small enough to give you pretty good chances (Northwest's is $50, AirTran's $75). The fees are usually steeper for international flights, but then again, the price drops stand to be higher for those, too.

After you book a flight, you could keep returning to the airlines' websites to double-check the rate status of your booked flights. That will work. But one of the lesser-known airline booking sites, Yapta, keeps tracking the price of the stuff you've bought, and if it descends past the point where you can actually make some money back, it alerts you by e-mail. (The site, like Hotwire's Trip Watcher and Farecast, will also keep an eye on rates for flights you haven't bought.) Every bit helps, right? Maybe the amount you save will pay for a pack of peanuts. Barely.

The airlines might have found a tax loophole, and you're it. The travel consultancy firm T2 recently published a worrisome blog post that is gaining traction. The airlines' extra fees, it says, aren't just costing consumers more. They're also enabling the airlines to dodge tax to our government.

Until a few months ago, checking a bag was considered a service that came with the base fare that you paid when you bought your plane ticket. That was taxed at a rate of 7.5%. But now many airlines are charging up to $50 for each bag each way, and because it's not part of the base fare, that fee isn't subject to tax. T2 says that cash belongs to the airlines, free and clear.

So a carrier like United, T2 writer Timothy O'Neil-Dunne calculates, would be cheating Uncle Sam out of tax income of $7.5 million for each $100 million it makes on extra fees. Given that United recently surmised that it stood to make $700 million on its extra fees, that's a lot of cash that won't be going to our schools, our roads, our veterans programs, and our elaborate Wall Street bailouts. Not only do consumers get screwed by these extra fees, they get screwed out of the greater good of tax revenue.

Hedging fuel costs sounds confusing, but it's nothing new. Some airlines, like the budget model Southwest, have managed to claim a profit in no small part because their masters were clever enough to buy most of its fuel when it was still sensibly priced. That can work out really well if gas prices go up, because those smart airlines will still be paying an older, lower price. Some experts think Southwest has saved $3.5 billion by doing this since the late '90s.

United Airlines, which has a management as sharp as a box of hammers and aging seating about as soft, thought it could imitate Southwest by getting into the hedging game, too. But, whoops! Timing is everything. It got in way too late, as the market prepared to peak. Prices went down. And right now it's paying almost $13 more a barrel than oil is actually worth, which could rack up as much as $544 million in boneheaded, unnecessary losses.

It's a lot like the guy down the street who bought his house a year ago for $400,000, only to find in this self-correcting market that it's now worth about $250,000, which everyone in the neighborhood knew was a more realistic price all along. He intended to flip it, but now he's got to live in it. Of course, if gas prices go back up a bit, United's loss may be mitigated slightly.

Did you ever think we'd see the day when people would beg for airline food? Yet here we are.

In mid-August, United announced it would start forcing coach passengers on international flights to pay for their meals. Customers went ballistic. First U.S. Airways makes people pay $2 for so much as water, and then United deigned to lock people up in a steel tube for eight hours without providing free grub. United rebuffed the complaints saying the changes were "necessary."

The new "test" charge was supposed to begin on many transatlantic flights as of Oct. 1. But after fierce feedback from would-be customers that the airline politely described as "candid" but were actually downright scalding, United announced Tuesday that it would not, after all, charge customers to eat on long-haul flights. Some passengers who protested the new fee, many of whom travel for work, were e-mailed a capitulation today ("We heard you," it reads, "and have decided not to move forward," before prattling on about its business class amenities).

Following recent increases in fuel surcharges by the airlines, Continental Airlines and United Airlines have announced that they're increasing fares immediately. The increases are expected to be up to $50 on round trip fares. The longer the flight, the greater the increase.

The price increased is blamed on airline fuel, which is at record high prices. Many of the airlines have been increasing their fuel surcharges as well, so the increase in the cost of air travel continues to rise. This will be the fourth week in a row that price increases have been announced by airlines.

Obviously, this price increase will hurt the frequent travelers (primarily business people) and families (buying multiple tickets at once) more. The price increases aren't really unexpected, as consumers have seen the prices of many things increase lately, including food, gas, and many consumer goods.