The founder of FlyerRights.org, the group pushing the hardest to get Congress to pass don't-strand-me-on-the tarmac legislation, alleged in a federal lawsuit that Delta conspired with a Virginia company to hack into her e-mails to try to derail her efforts. Read more here.

UPDATE: Southwest Airlines is expected by analysts to report a small third-quarter loss tomorrow. Here's a report from the AP that came in Wednesday evening. The rest of this entry was posted on Wednesday afternoon.

It's inherently unfair to report what one airline is doing that may affect customers without being able to say if other airlines are doing the same thing. That said, here goes anyway: Southwest announced its May-March 2010 flight schedule today, and it includes trimming three PHL flights and adding one. It's eliminating its one PHL-Austin, Tex., nonstop flight, and taking its PHL to Manchester and Providence schedules from five a day to four. One additional flight, PHL-Tampa, will be added.

In total, Southwest is adding 62 weekday flights and eliminating 10, for a net gain of 52. By that measure, PHL doesn't seem to be doing as well as a market for the airline as some of its others. Much of the increase in this schedule is focused on Baltimore and Chicago Midway, two of its largest "focus cities" (hubs to other carriers). 

If I could tell you what other airlines have done to their PHL schedules in this time of deep cuts in capacity I would. But Southwest -- different in so many ways from competitors -- is the only carrier that regularly informs me through its e-mailed press releases how its schedules are changing. Airlines always trumpet  new routes from PHL but we don't always know when a route is abandoned or the schedule cut back. If the other airlines would do as Southwest does, I would let you know.

Another Southwest note: The airline received complaints this summer from its frequent fliers (including at least one reader of this blog) on the schedules on its PHL-Pittsburgh route, and -- lo and behold! --- Southwest responded. As part of earlier capacity cuts, the airline had eliminated an early morning PHL-PIT flight, leaving the first one of the day a post-9 a.m. departure. Now it's put a flight just after 7 a.m. back on the route. Thanks to Steve and all the others who complained, and thanks to Southwest for listening to its best customers.   

Amtrak reported today that its fiscal year 2009 ridership was about a million passengers below it's record-setting pace of the year before. Even with the decline, last  year was the second-highest the railroad ever recorded. Lower business travel numbers on the Northeast Corridor line were blamed for much of the slide in the most recent 12 months. More detail can be found here.   

Thanks to a greivance filed by his union, the US Airways pilot fired last year after his loaded gun discharged in a bag in the cockpit of his jet, puncturing a hole in the fuselage, has won his job back. More can be found in this story...

The Inquirer's hospitality reporter Suzette Parmley reports today that a boutique hotel chain, Kimpton, is opening its newest property this week in Center City, a sign that life goes on in the lodging business, despite the current deep downturn. Hotels in most places are a relative bargain these days because demand, with much less of it coming from business travelers, has been depressed. Kimpton is confident that the Palomar Hotel at 17th and Sansom, another smart reuse of an one of Center City's older buildings, will appeal to the stylish travelers that its hotel in other cities do. Read more ...