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 tale of the scrimping airlines gets curiouser and curiouser. And shiftier and shiftier. Continental has announced that it will reduce the maximum size of its passengers' carry-on bags by a full six inches.

That's right. As of November 1, if you try to tote a bag measuring more than a total of 51 inches, by the rights the airline can turn you around and force you to pay to check it. The new rule says that domestic carry-ons can't measure more than 45 inches.

Gee, Continental, this stricter rule wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that as of October 7, you now charge $15 for the first checked bag and $25 for the second, would it? After all, there are lots of people whose bags fit in the overhead bin just fine today, but as of the Thanksgiving flight rush, could potentially be forced to shell out for them. You wouldn't be taking advantage of consumers, would you? You won't take these new rules as an opportunity for the extra-charge police to stop passengers with a poorly timed gotcha, right?

What happens in Vegas may stay there, but these days, the problem is how to get there in the first place.

McCarran Airport, Vegas' major entry point, reported its biggest year-on-year drop since after 9/11. And Southwest Airlines, the rare profitable airline which recently said it wouldn't need to tighten its flight schedule, reversed course and said 13 flights, or about 5% of its Las Vegas seats, would be eliminated starting in January. Considering Southwest is one of the most reliable feeder of tourist traffic to the Strip, that's quite a blow.

To further put it in perspective, as of Sept. 2, Vegas had 81 flights from U.S. Airways daily. A year ago, it had 141.

The pain, though, is mostly for hoteliers and airlines. Tourists are starting to see a real benefit to the growing malaise. On Tuesday, Arthur Frommer wrote about seeing an ad for a two-night Planet Hollywood package for $149 per person that came with either $100 back or two free show tickets. When he called to book, he told the receptionist it was still too expensive. And just like that, he was offered the same deal for two people at $249 total. That's desperation.

Earlier this summer, casinos were low-balling tourists with archaic rates like $33 to $55 a room. Even now, prices on the Strip are sliding southward (the Sahara for $24, the Tropicana, $46, both quoted through a Hotels.com promotion) and rooms off the Strip are so low (like $20 at the Plaza Hotel off Fremont Street), they're virtually tragic.

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).

When you travel for work, you know the drill: Get receipts for everything. When you spend cash for stuff like meals, beverages, hotels, and rental cars, your employer is likely to pick up the tab as long as you've got proof of purchase.

But what if you have to spend money on the road but can't get a receipt? It's happening more and more. The major airlines have deployed their newest fees with such haste that they are not always equipped to issue receipts for on-board purchases. Ask a flight attendant for one, and on some carriers you're more likely to receive a blank stare than appropriate documentation.

Take U.S. Airways. As of Aug. 1, the carrier began charging for drinks of any sort, including $2 for water. Passengers are not permitted to carry their own beverages through security, and buying drinks in the terminal is not always possible either because of a time crunch or because of personal dignity over gouging. If you, a business traveler, decide during Hour Three of a flight that you're thirsty, the staff will sell you a drink but they won't be able to give you a receipt.

I called U.S. Airways to ask if any of its flight attendants were equipped to furnish receipts for this newfangled charge. The answer was no. Right now, an airline rep told me, there are "plans" to give on-board staff hand-held devices for printing receipts by the first quarter of 2009, but for now, they have nothing, and those nebulous "plans" could not be elucidated for me. U.S. Airways' flight attendants also have neither the training or the equipment to write receipts by hand.