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.

God save the Queen! And Sir Richard Branson, too.

I've long been a huge fan of his Virgin Atlantic, the British airline that flies nonstop to London from several major hubs over here in the colonies, including San Francisco and Los Angeles. I have in-laws over the pond, and Virgin, with its comfortable coach class and individualized TV screens (worth paying extra for when importing children overseas), made me a regular customer.

Now Branson's low-fare Virgin American (which had quite an uphill battle to even operate in this country) has taken up residence at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX), causing the other low-cost carriers such as Alaska, Southwest and United such a snit! They've been forced to match or lower their fares just to keep up with the shiny Virgin, which has offered promotional prices as low as $44 one-way.

Even perennial low-fare favorite JetBlue has been forced to add routes and lower fares.

The story in the LA Times quotes Paul Haney, deputy executive director of LAS, as saying, "We've become a hotbed of competition...I don't know if we could say that without Virgin America."

Since all of this is in my backyard, I'm right chuffed, indeed. (Los Angeles translation: Totally stoked.) Cheap fares to San Francisco and New York? God bless Capitalism and market forces. And Happy flying, one and all!