Baltimore: Museum wants your photos and tattoo designs

As we anticipated in an earlier blog post, a new airline under the Virgin brand will be launching in December. V Australia will link L.A. with Sydney, Australia. ("G'day, L.A.!", as one blogger puts it.) There will be 10 roundtrips a week, says The Daily News. The service will increase the number of seats flying between the U.S. and Australia by 16 percent, says a press release. V Australia will fly Boeing 777-300ER planes that will allow passengers to send and receive text messages via mobile phone and use gizmos such as the BlackBerry and Palm Treo in-flight. Are there deals to be had? Maybe. Economy class seats will have about 19 inches of seat width and 32 inches of legroom, slightly more than the typical economy-class seat on an international route flown by a U.S. airline. V Australia says that these seats will be sold for a starting price in the high $700s, which they say is about 14 percent lower than the current average on the route, according to the L.A. Times Travel Deals blog. But many of the sale fares, such as they were, have already been booked up, according to The Cranky Flier. See more details at vaustralia.com.au. We previously blogged about the U.S.-Australia route (see here). Have thoughts about trans-Pacific flights or the new V Australia service? Then sound off below.

I like JetBlue, always have. I booked a flight from JFK to Long Beach, Calif., before the airline announced that you could pay a bit more and get seats with more legroom. (I looooove more legroom.) So when the airline sent me an email saying that we could change our seats and get 38" of legroom for "as little as $10 more," I checked it out. But I had to bail out of the process because the airline would not be clear about what exactly the cost would be. ("As little as $10" only gets you so far--this ain't my first time at the rodeo.) I'm sure it was $20 per flight--which I know is the ceiling for the legroom fee--but I got so annoyed that the airline wouldn't just say so that I kept our initial seats. Plus: We're two people currently in a window and an aisle, with an empty seat between us. If we upgrade to the 38" rows, I expect there's zero chance we'll end up with an empty seat in the middle. And legroom is great, but unless they're going to start making the seats wider--and they should!--more legroom will only make me so happy.

American Airlines has introduced an option to pay through your checking or savings account when buying tickets online. This service is terrific for budget travelers because first, it's free, and second, it encourages you to stop putting things on your credit cards. It's cliché but true: The best way to stay out of excessive debt is to pay now rather than pay later whenever you can, as I've learned myself the hard way. The downside to this new service is that you must book your tickets through AA.com. Be sure to use another search engine to compare fares before you book through AA.com. While AA.com promises to offer you its lowest fares via its own website, another airline may be serving the same route at a lower fare--and you might miss it if you search only on AA.com. AA's payment system looks like a snap to use: You type in your bank routing and account numbers printed on the bottom of your paper check or your savings account withdrawal slip. You also enter your address and driver's license or state-issued ID number. (When purchasing a ticket, just look for the option to pay by electronic check.) Kudos to American for launching this service. Northwest Airlines, Southwest Airlines, and US Airways accept payments by PayPal, which is a similar service that allows for electronic payments to be deducted via your checking account. But you may be hit with charges, depending on how you do these transactions. Check the fine print before you pay.