Delta is turning the flight-bumping game into a reverse auction

On March 1, Southwest Airlines will change the rules for its Rapid Rewards program (newrapidrewards.com). What's the upshot? The new rules are more complicated. They make points dependent on the price of the tickets you buy and the types of tickets you buy (such as refundable or non-refundable). Up until now, travelers earned a free ticket simply after buying eight round-trips. Under the new rules, if you always buy tickets with the same class of service, Southwest is giving you $1 back for every $100 you spend. In other words, you'll earn a free ticket after buying ten round-trips, assuming each ticket costs the same. What's changing: Earning points Fliers will earn points for every dollar spent. You'll earn 6 points per dollar for cheap, nonrefundable "Wanna Get Away" tickets, 10 points per dollar for fully refundable "Anytime" tickets, and 12 points per dollar for expensive Business Select tickets, which comes with perks like free WiFi and drinks. You'll also earn bonus points for buying tickets in the nicest classes of service, which means that business class tickets are much more rewarding than before. What's changing: Redeeming points There is a different calculation for each class of service. For a free "Wanna Get Away" ticket, you need to earn 60 points per dollar of fare to have enough for a free ticket. Case in point: If the fare for a specific flight is $100, you need to earn 6,000 points for a free ticket (60 times 100).For a free "Anytime" ticket, you need to earn 100 points per dollar of fare. For a free "Business Select" ticket, you need to earn 120 points per dollar of fare. What about expiration dates and blackout dates? You can keep all of your points alive if you have some "account activity" every two years. "Account activity" can mean opening a Southwest Chase credit card, redeeming miles, or buying a ticket. Under the old system, each flight is worth one "credit," and credits expired after two years. The airline says there are getting rid of blackout dates and dropping limits on how many reward seats are set aside on any given flight. What if you don't have enough points? You can buy points. It costs $50 for 2,000 points, and then $25 for every additional set of 1,000 points. How does you do under the new rules as a budget-conscious traveler? Not as well under the old system on average, though it depends on the type of flights you take and how often you fly Southwest. In general, the change favors high-spending travelers. If you are someone who mostly flies short-haul flights at the dirt cheapest prices, you're going to have to work harder now—spending about 20 percent more, roughly speaking -- to earn the valuable long-distance or last-minute flight. What's the best deal under the new rules? Buy lots of "Anytime" tickets and then redeem for a cheap "Wanna Get Away" ticket. What about the credits you've already earned but haven't used yet? Each old credit is worth 1,200 new points each. For a short time, if you have a bunch of credits and just need a little more to get a free round trip you can convert points from the new system to earn the last gasp of credits for one last award. What do you think about the new Rapid Rewards program? Sound off in the comments! MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL Are you less likely to fly in 2011? (90+ comments) Delta drops fees for booking reward seats at the last minute JetBlue revamps its rewards program

Why party like a rock star when you can hang with the rock stars instead? The latest trend in travel—musician and celebrity-led trips—is hitting Mardi Gras this year, as alt-rockers Better Than Ezra announce a personally-guided weekend tour of their home state's annual festival. The band, famous for 90's hits such as "Good" and "Desperately Wanting," will host a 3-day event, dubbed the Krewe of Rocckus, during the last weekend of Carnival, from Thursday, March 3rd to Saturday March 5th. (Mardi Gras officially kicks off Friday, February 25th and runs through Fat Tuesday, on March 8th.) Lead singer Kevin Griffin told us by phone this week that he got the idea after seeing the success of musicians John Mayer's and Kid Rock's cruises last year. Kid Rock's 2010 trip was such a hit, in fact, that the sponsor company, Sixthman, is already planning a 2011 sailing. "We're neophytes in the travel industry," Griffin said, "but New Orleans is our town, and what better way for visitors to experience it than with insiders like us? I want to take people to the neighborhoods I love, the restaurants where I eat, and the music venues I like best." In many ways, the Krewe of Rocckus package is like a fast-pass to the rock star treatment. Tickets grant guests the kind of exclusive access that would be next to impossible for most to come by on their own, like admission to private balconies on Bourbon Street and stands on historic St. Charles Avenue to watch the parades. Also included are tickets to two nights of concerts by Better Than Ezra and other Louisiana musicians at the House of Blues. Griffin said his "love affair" with New Orleans began when he lived there after college, right around when he founded Better Than Ezra with fellow Louisiana native Tom Drummond. "The architecture, the music, the literature, the food—there's just something inherently inspiring about New Orleans," he said. After Katrina, Griffin and the other members of Better Than Ezra established a non-profit called The BTE Foundation and raised more than $2 million to help rebuild the city and restore the coastline. "Rebuilding post-Katrina is still ongoing, but New Orleans is in a much better place today than it was before," Griffin said. "So now I want to get people down here to show them what the city's all about. Mardi Gras is not just some college party weekend—it's a beautiful cultural event, with incredible music and food and pageantry. We're going to be bending over backwards to make sure people have a good time and see that side of it." If this year's Krewe of Rocckus is a success, Griffin said he hopes to make the trip an annual tradition. Krewe of Rocckus packages start at $695 per person, including meals, open bars, all tickets, and three nights' stay at the Hilton Riverside Hotel. Airfare not included. Booking details can be found here. Vote for America's Coolest Small Towns 2011 Mardi Gras: Still America's Best Party Photos: Mardi Gras floats on 25 Reasons We Love New Orleans

Expedia and Orbitz have stopped showing nearly all American Airlines flights. If you want to book tickets on American, you have to go directly to the airline's site, aa.com, or shop at other major online travel agencies and search engines. Expedia and Orbitz are battling with American about who controls the search results you see. The backstory says a lot about how airlines want vacationers to pay even higher prices for fares. Here's the gist: American is jealous of Southwest, which has earned fatter profits over the years. American is especially jealous of how Southwest sells its tickets only through southwest.com, while preventing online travel agencies from selling its tickets. Southwest saves money by selling directly to its passengers, because it doesn't have to pay fees to middlemen. Meanwhile, every time American posts a ticket on a site like Expedia, the airline has to pay about 10 percent in fees. Some of those fees go to the online travel agency, and some go to a middleman company that runs computer databases. In contrast, every time a ticket is sold through American's own website, all of the traveler's money goes to the airline. Even better for American, whenever a flier shops for a ticket directly on its aa.com site, the airline can up-sell the person on additional services, such as roomier seats. American decided not to fully copy Southwest. It didn't want to stop listing its fares with all online travel sites—which provide about 17 percent of its revenue. So it came up with a half-way measure. The airline invented its own computer system, called Direct Connect, and asked Expedia and Orbitz to use it instead of the middleman's computer services. This would give American the best of both worlds: The airline would continue to have its fares listed on major online travel sites, but it would no longer have to pay a fee of up to $4 per ticket to a middleman for its computer services to do so. Plus, its new computer system would let it upsell vacationers on profitable services. But Expedia and Orbitz don't like Direct Connect. They don't like it for several reasons, but the most important one for budget travelers is that American's planned new system would ultimately make tickets more expensive—driving business down. Tickets sold by online agencies like Expedia and Orbitz are 45 percent cheaper than ones sold by traditional travel agencies, says a survey by UBS quoted by the New York Times. American's new model would push up prices higher. Expedia worried that the next shoe to drop would be for American to stop providing fares to it as well, not just Orbitz. So after American recently pulled its fares from Orbitz, Expedia stopped showing American's fares in solidarity with its competitor. It's an effort to team up and stop the airlines before they gain momentum and take actions that will push up prices. Other airlines are watching the battle closely. On December 17, Delta, for one, stopped allowing three sites—CheapOAir.com, OneTravel.com, and BookIt.com—from listing its flights. What do you think? MORE FROM BUDGET TRAVEL An airfare search with a sense of humor: Hipmunk The best flight search tool you've never heard of: ITA Software For the lowest airfare, study says book eight weeks in advance