"Airlines have reduced the amount of spare fuel on airplanes in a money-saving effort that is raising concerns among some pilots and a government watchdog." That's the lede sentence in a story today from USA Today. What the story lacks is perspective. It's common industry knowledge that airlines have been asking pilots to conserve fuel—and it's been going on for sometime.

I recently talked to an airline pilot who was telling me some of the different tricks of fuel conservation. But the main point of his conversation was that the airlines EXPECT pilots to conserve fuel.

The weight of an airplane, and the role is plays in the business of airlines, is little understood by either the media or the public. Let's start with a couple of obvious points: 1) if a plane is overweight it can't fly safely. 2) There are three main weight variables that an airline deals with on every flight: the weight of people, the weight of fuel, the weight of baggage.

How does this affect you? Here's an example: pilots calculate the combined weight of these three variables before take off. If the math says the plane is overweight, the airline might have three passengers (and their luggage) get off the plane. But there are other, less obvious, things that this math affects...

Here's an example: for the past few years the airlines have mostly flown regional jets (RJs) into markets our size (they've done this for economic reasons that you're about to get a taste of). RJs are small; usually 40, 50, or (if you're lucky) 70 seats. The fact that most of our service is on RJs makes it extremely hard for us to convince an airline to provide direct service to either coast. Why? In a word...weight.

Suppose we're talking about a hypothetical flight between Springfield and Los Angeles on a 50-seat RJ. To fly that far the plane has to carry A LOT of fuel—so much fuel that 50 people, plus their baggage, makes the plane overweight. So what does the captain do? He might make ten people and their bags get off. Now here's where the math gets nitty-gritty. With only 40 paying passengers onboard the flight can't make a profit.

Doesn't airline math make your head hurt?!

The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) wants to charge a fifty cent per flight surcharge for security technology. The proposal is currently being discussed in Congress.

The up side: the new technology should speed up the security screening of checked bags (assuming the TSA delivers what it's promising). The down side: who wants to pay another fee?

Read more from the Federal Times.

Airlines should expect a one percent decline in passenger numbers this summer. That'a according to the Air Transport Association of America. In a press release the association says, "Record-high jet fuel prices, a weakening economy and airline capacity cuts are the main reasons for the reduction in the number of passengers; still airplanes will be flying with relatively full loads."

Our passenger numbers tend to bear out this prediction. January thrugh April our numbers are down two percent over last year. The more telling statistic is the decline in flights. In April of last year we had 944 scheduled flights. This April the number was down to 890. This is a direct reflection of "airline capacity cuts."

We've added another set of images to the midfield terminal photo album—the link is on the right, under the heading "Pictures."

Any feedback you have on the album would be appreciated. We're mainly concerned with how well it works. The slide show feature seems to be a bit finicky with some web browsers and download times are definitely on the longish side. Too long?

Still tweaking!