Now, Farecast, a Web site that forecasts whether you should buy now or wait for awhile to purchase an airline ticket based on historic data and pricing trends, will tell consumers whether they're getting a good deal, an average deal or a bad deal when they shop for hotel rooms.

That type of information available to consumers should make life interesting for the city's resorts in the future, especially as new properties come on line and competition gets a little tougher.

Las Vegas is among the 30 major cities with 5,000 properties included on the beta version of Farecast's new hotel pricing component that went live earlier this week. The company eventually hopes to provide hotel rate information worldwide.

Farecast offers a powerful program.

Chief Executive Hugh Crean gave me a demonstration of how the site works. Once you enter your city's name, it's easy to find all the hotels within a given radius of a point of interest. Crean showed me a map of all the hotels within a 3-mile radius of Boston's Fenway Park in his demo, but I'm sure it would be just as easy to find locations within two miles of, say, the Las Vegas Convention Center.

Once you plug in the dates you plan to stay, it takes seconds for color-coded flags to appear listing the property, the average room rate and whether that rate is above average, below average or at about average based on how much the room cost a year ago during a similar time frame.

Deals are based on analyzing historic rates for a particular hotel as well as the rates for that hotel three months into the future.

You can also make comparisons to other time frames, and a separate report will give specific details about the amenities of the property and what percentage higher or lower the room rate offered is compared with the annual average. The site also offers a star rating, photos of the property and reviews by guests who have stayed at the hotel.

It's easy to spot the blue flags — the ones marking the properties that are below average — and the red ones that show higher-than-average rates.

"Our system is based on science, not marketing," said Crean, whose site is financed by separate sponsored banner ads, display ads and referral fees the company collects when the site leads to a booking. "Not all four-stars are created equally."

Crean said the site could be helpful to out-of-towners who aren't aware of details of the city's convention calendar. The red flags would literally go up at many Las Vegas properties in the first week of January when the Consumer Electronics Show is in town. Traditionally, hotel rates climb to their highest levels when major conventions come to town.

Crean said travelers with flexible schedules could book at a different time to avoid the big crowds and high rates of CES.

Because the site is in beta design, Crean said he would be looking for feedback from site users to tweak the details, just as he did with the air-fare forecasting features that the company introduced last year.

In general, the city's annual daily room rate has been climbing at a healthy clip in 2007 with ADRs that have gone up by double-digit percentages over the same month a year earlier for most months. If demand continues to climb as it has, the only thing that could drive prices down is a new competitor in the market, like a Palazzo later this year or a Trump next year.

But now, consumers will have access to information that can help them make better choices if price is an issue.

Class-action lawsuit: You may have heard that Korean Air, which has nonstop flights between Las Vegas and Seoul, admitted in U.S. District Court in Washington last week to a price-fixing scheme involving fuel surcharges. International shippers and passengers paid higher fares and cargo costs as a result of the collusion.

"Korean Air prides itself on being a leader in providing transpacific air cargo and passenger airline services and on being a good and respected corporate citizen in the countries in which we operate," the airline said in a statement. "We greatly value our customers, appreciate their loyalty and are dedicated to providing them with the very best services possible at competitive prices.

"Korean Air is committed to antitrust compliance and is continuing its ongoing efforts to ensure that the type of conduct that resulted in our entry into this agreement is never repeated in the future."

After pleading guilty to antitrust conspiracy charges, Korean Air agreed to pay a $300 million fine.

But that's just the beginning of what the airline might end up paying.

A Seattle law firm has filed a class-action suit against Korean Air on behalf of passengers who flew the airline from Jan. 1, 2000, to July 16, 2006. That may not include a lot of Las Vegans, since the nonstop service began in September 2006. But others may have flown Korean from Los Angeles prior to start-up of the nonstop flights.

Persons wanting more information about the suit should visit the Web site of Hagens Berman Sobol Shapiro at www.hbsslaw.com.

We're No. 5: Orbitz, one of the online travel companies that monitors visitation patterns across the country, reports that, based on its sales data, McCarran International Airport will be the fifth-busiest U.S. airport over the Labor Day weekend, trailing Chicago's O'Hare International, Charlotte's Douglas International, Philadelphia International and Atlanta's Hartfield-Jackson. It's clear that most of those airports are hubs that will encounter a lot of traffic from passengers who are changing planes to go somewhere else.

Chicago serves American Airlines, Atlanta is home of Delta and US Airways uses both Charlotte and Philadelphia as hubs — not that there probably aren't a few people out there who would want to spend Labor Day in one of those four cities.

But the Orbitz data that intrigued me the most was where Las Vegas was ranked on Labor Day 2006. The city's airport was 31st.

How is that even possible, I asked Orbitz executive Jim Cohn. Is it really possible that more people used the airport in Detroit than Las Vegas in the annual sayonara to summer?

The answer may be in that Orbitz now has 40 percent more available inventory to sell in Las Vegas this year from last year and because the company only counts its sales, it's plausible Las Vegas could have made the leap from No. 31 to No. 4.

Incidentally, Atlanta Hartsfield, the nation's busiest airport, ranked No. 14 in 2006. Los Angeles International was first.

Internationally, the busiest airports this Labor Day holiday will be London Heathrow, Cancun International (that was based on bookings before Hurricane Dean washed away a lot of the resort's sandy beaches), San Juan, Puerto Rico, International (ditto on Hurricane Dean damage), Toronto's Lester Pearson International (which was No. 1 internationally last year) and Vancouver International.

Labor turmoil: In most labor disputes, management and unions are pitted against each other. Negotiation and compromise eventually lead to a contract between labor and management and everybody walks away, not always happy but at least with an agreement in hand until the next series of negotiations come up. In the difficult struggle involving pilots of US Airways — the second busiest air carrier at McCarran International Airport — it's pilot against pilot.

In a few weeks, the airline will observe the second anniversary of the merger between US Airways and America West. The merger has been difficult, with incompatible computer systems meshed together, snags that have delayed passengers and resulted in long airport lines and schedule changes that have reduced service to some cities (fortunately not Las Vegas). But nothing has been as contentious as the pilot contract negotiations, which are pitting the "East" pilots — those who used to fly for the old US Airways — against the "West" pilots who flew for the old America West.

Two different groups of the Air Line Pilots Association are representing the East and West pilots. Airline management wants to negotiate with one pilot group and not pit one group against the other. But the East and West groups haven't been able to get on the same page. US Airways Chief Executive Doug Parker has offered to raise the East pilots to the same level as the better paid West pilots and give the collective group a 3 percent pay raise. But the East pilots aren't budging because the two groups can't get together on the issue of blending the list of pilots and their seniority. An arbitrator tried to blend the lists, but the 2,618 East pilots said they lost ground to the 1,785 West pilots and the whole thing broke down into a series of lawsuits and countersuits.

Seniority is important to pilots because it's not only a basis for pay, but it also determines who gets first choice in scheduling and what type of planes they can fly. Now, the East pilots have walked out on negotiations, demanding a pay raise of between 3 percent and 17 percent effective Sept. 1. The West pilots are aggravated with their Eastern counterparts, saying their own pay raises are being held hostage by the Easterners.

Meanwhile, Parker continues to wait, not wanting to negotiate with one side or the other. And customers in the meanwhile will have to hope that the dispute doesn't spill over into something that affects them.

Free monorail rides: If you're a local, you can ride the Las Vegas Monorail free all day Sept. 1. Live entertainment and giveaways are planned at each of the seven Monorail stations from 1-4 p.m. The free day is a move to build awareness and some good will with neighbors over the Labor Day weekend.