US Airways stockholders vote to double shares

US Airways' stockholders voted today to double the number of common shares to 400 million, another sign of the struggle it and other carriers are having. Inquirier beat reporter Linda Loyd filed this story on the vote, at the company's annual meeting in New York today.

The need for more liquidty for airlines is the result, of course, of the depression in traffic caused by the global recession. Besides the weakness in traffic, oil prices are headed north again, largely on the back of the kind of speculation that sent costs soaring last summer -- something that should worry us all. The  desperation to fill empty airplane seats caused some carriers to start a new round of discounting on international travel today -- for the peak of the summer travel season.