United‘s chosen to call its offerings "twares," and would-be travelers need to click through to the main United site in order to see how much things cost.  JetBlue has labeled its deals "cheeps," and it posts every flight’s start and end points, along with the price, right on Twitter.

Both companies’ Twitter accounts are pretty popular, with about 15,500 and 21,000 followers, respectively.  It’s gotten to the point that flights often sell out in very little time.  Flyers win because the prices can be extremely low (JetBlue often offers tickets for just $9).

The interesting potential catch is that these bargain tickets tend to be one-way, and so airlines stand to gain more money when people book their return flights.

Still, even leaving that aside, JetBlue and United have figured out a way to use a fast-moving medium to sell time-sensitive deals.  Hat tip goes to Charisse Jones.

United will be using Aircell’s Gogo Inflight Internet service which will allow customers to surf the Web, check email, and send instant messages. The service will be available to customers traveling in all classes for a flat fee of $12.95.

Jack Blumenstein
Aircell president

"I can’t think of a better way for Aircell to usher in 2009 as the year of Inflight Internet than by announcing our partnership with United," said Jack Blumenstein, Aircell president & CEO.

"Forward-thinking airlines like United are putting the power of Gogo in their passengers’ hands and reaping the revenue and customer loyalty benefits that it brings."

United says that Gogo will initially be available on 13 of its Boeing 757 p.s. aircraft that fly between John F. Kennedy International Airport and California’s two largest airports – Los Angeles International Airport and San Francisco International Airport. Depending on customer feedback United and Aircell will consider additional rollout plans.

Aircell currently provides its inflight Internet service to American, Delta, Virgin American, and Air Canada.
 

UAL, parent of United Airlines, saw its shares fall 76 percent to $3 because of an article by the Florida Sun-Sentinel reporting the bankruptcy filing which was picked up by Bloomberg financial news service.

"United continues to execute its previously announced business plan to successfully navigate through an environment marked by volatile fuel prices and continues to have strong liquidity," the company said in a statement.

The Sun-Sentinel did not have an explanation as to how the article, first published on December 10, 2002 appeared on its site. The Tribune Co, which owns the Sun-Sentinel, said it was investigating the incident.

The Tribune Co said it was looking into any possible role that Google may have had in crawling the Sun-Sentinel site over the weekend and pushing the story onto the "popular Stories: Business" section of the paper.

Google says it had no role in the article resurfacing and that it first appeared on the Sun-Sentinel site. On the company blog Google states,"On Saturday, September 6th at 10:36PM Pacific, the Google crawler discovered a new link on the Florida Sun-Sentinel website in a section of the most viewed stories labeled ‘Popular Stories: Business.’"

"The link appeared in that section sometime after Googlebot’s last crawl at 10:17PM; because the crawler saw this new link appear, it followed it to an article titled "UAL Files for Bankruptcy."

"We removed this story from the Google News index as soon as we were notified that it had been linked to in error."