Is shipping your bags the solution?

Air France is discounting its fares from 14 U.S. gateways to 24 European destinations for travel between Sept. 1 and October 29—just book by July 8. A one-way flight from Philly to Madrid is as little as $276. Of course, there are some conditions (a required Saturday night stay) and extras like taxes and fees of $80 to $150, and a $30 surcharge for Thursday through Sunday departures. But at least fuel surcharges are included! RELATED Real Deals

The highly rated domestic carrier based out of Milwaukee, Wis., and Kansas City, Mo., announced last week that it was seeking to cut the number of its planes by as much as half—leaving it with just 20-25 Boeing 717 jets and none of the less fuel-efficient MD-80s. The cuts don't end there: Midwest also wants to lay off hundreds of employees and get pay cuts of as much as 65% from the unionized pilots and flight attendants that will be staying on. If all the cuts go through, this will leave Midwest with about 200 pilots and about the same number of attendants. Service reductions, although not yet announced for the fall schedule, are also in the cards. As Jaunted points out, no one want to fly on an airline that seems doomed or about to go through Chapter 11. It really does sound as if this restructuring is that one last-ditch attempt before declaring bankruptcy. And what's likely to happen if Midwest doesn't recover? It might be an opening for the competitor AirTran to move in on Midwest's territory. And it might mean that Midwest gets swallowed up as part of a possible new Delta-Northwest airline. (Northwest owns a 47 percent share in Midwest, and Delta stands to inherit it if a planned merger goes through.) "It appears to me that the Midwest fleet is no longer needed," said one analyst from Airline Forecasts LLC, a Virginia-based consulting firm.

Are travel agents still worth using? As Christopher Elliott (the Travel Troubleshooter) pointed out in a recent column, it's definitely not a growth industry. The number of travel agents in the U.S. is down 30 percent since 2000. Bucking the DIY trend in some respects, Elliot comes down firmly in favor of agents: They can be "your greatest asset when you're planning a trip." But that's only if they're competent and not fly-by-night. Among his four "secrets" for finding a good agent are looking for those certified by the American Society of Travel Agents, and opting for agents who work nearby and are easily accessible. Online agents, connected to you by little more than a web address and a phone line, may be hard to track down later, when and if there's a problem. (For simple flight and hotel bookings, of course, online agents such as Expedia and Travelocity work just fine.) I agree with Elliott that meeting an agent face to face is still hard to beat when you have something complicated in mind... Agents usually aren't worth it for my own bare-bones style of traveling. But for a long, complicated trip to Asia, for example, or for somewhere equally far-flung, an agent can be a great idea. The many time zones and linguistic and cultural differences you'll be confronting can make booking such trips on your own too time-consuming to be practical. When I was living in India, I booked most trips myself—but I didn't hesitate to call in an expert for trips with lots of stops, starts, and complications, such as a visit I was planning to Agra, Jaipur, and Delhi (the so-called Golden Triangle). In addition to streamlining my ambitious itinerary so that it made the most geographic sense, my agent got hotel upgrades whenever possible. And he also got us a good deal. I suppose, ultimately, it's a matter of personal taste: Some people find it rewarding to plan their entire itinerary, others are pressed for personal time and need someone else to step in and take care of the details. In the end, I think it's premature to talk about the demise of the travel agent. There's clearly a place for them, still, and with lives getting busier, I don't see that ending anytime soon.