ShareThisRound-trip airline ticket to New York? I'll bid a hundred bucks.JetBlue Airways Corp., the Forest Hills, N.Y.-based discount airline, landed on eBay this week, offering more than 300 round-trip flights and six vacation packages on the online bidding site.The three-, five- and seven-day auctions include one- and two-person round trips from Oakland, San Jose, Long Beach, Burbank, Boston, Chicago, New York, Orlando, Salt Lake City and Fort Lauderdale. The posted weekend flights leave on Thursdays or Fridays and return on Sundays or Mondays, at varying departure dates through Oct. 6. Opening bids started Monday as low as 5 cents but quickly rose into the hundreds of dollars.JetBlue is believed to be the first airline to offer tickets on eBay in large volume.The eBay flights also include a handful of "mystery" JetBlue vacation packages to undisclosed locations, two of them requiring passports. In addition, there are vacation packages with airfare and a four-night hotel stay for two in Las Vegas and Nassau in the Bahamas.To view the latest bids, go to www.jetblue.com/ebay.JetBlue spokeswoman Alison Eshelman said, "It seems like our customers are enjoying the opportunity to bid on the trips."Many airlines have struggled this summer with high fuel prices and decreased passenger travel and some - as the busy summer travel season winds down - are cutting back service. Eshelman said the eBay idea evolved from those economic realities."The September-October period is a time when tourism in general slows down," she said. "We were trying to think of some kind of promotion for our customers that would not break the bank, but in a fun way."Will JetBlue auction off a second round of eBay flights?"We went into this as a limited-time promotion," Eshelman said. "Based on the evaluation and feedback we get, we'll consider if we do it again."Harlan Platt, a finance professor who follows the airline industry from Northeastern University in Boston, called the auctions "a great idea. In this day and age, people are inundated with ads as they are sitting on airplanes or at airports. A subtle advertisement such as this could be very effective."Platt speculated that the auctions will produce final bids between 85 percent and 90 percent of the regular fares.E-mail Mark Glover at mglover(at)sacbee.com(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
JetBlue auctions flights over eBay
Paying taxes unites us. It also divides us. People can pay five and even six times more in state and local taxes than other folks in similar circumstances making similar incomes.
Who's got your number?
In one of the fastest-growing forms of identity theft, crooks are stealing tax refunds by swiping personal information and using it to trick the Internal Revenue Service.
