Boeing Co. sold just one commercial airplane this week, a 737 to an unidentified buyer.

That brings the company's 2008 order book up to 190 aircraft.

Top seller as usual is the twin-engine, single-aisle 737, the world's best-selling commercial airplane, with 133 orders for the year.

Following it in popularity this year is the 787 Dreamliner with 40 orders, the 777 with 16 orders and the 747 with just one order through Tuesday.

The 767, on which Boeing had pinned its aerial tanker hopes, has no new orders this year. The Air Force last week announced it intends to award a $40 billion contract for 179 aerial tankers to Northrop Grumman-EADS for a tanker based on Airbus' A330 airliner.

Both Alaska Airlines and its sister airline, Horizon Air, saw passenger traffic jump substantially in February.

The companies, both part of the Alaska Air Group, reported both better overall traffic numbers and fuller planes last month.

Alaska's February traffic increased 13.5 percent to 1.419 billion passenger miles in February compared with the same period a year ago. A revenue passenger mile is one mile flown by one paying passenger.

The percentage of Alaska Airlines' seats filled jumped to 73.3 percent in February from 70.7 percent in February 2007.

At Horizon, February traffic was up 4.7 percent. The percentage of seats filled increased to 71.1 percent compared with 68.8 percent in the same month last year.

SeaTac's Alaska Airlines has upgraded its first class food service on flights between Seattle and Los Angeles and San Francisco to fend off new competition from Virgin America and JetBlue Airways.

Virgin America, based in Burlingame, Calif., near the San Francisco International Airport, and JetBlue, which has a hub in Long Beach, Calif., have announced new West Coast routes. Virgin America will compete with Alaska and United Airlines between Seattle and San Francisco and Seattle and Los Angeles, and JetBlue will take on Alaska in Seattle-Long Beach and Seattle-San Diego markets.

Alaska's new first class menus on the Seattle-San Francisco and Seattle-LAX routes will include warm pastries, fresh fruit bowls and yogurt, hot French toast , scrambled eggs and bacon, cheese and crackers, crudites and salami sandwiches, Asian noodles with chicken satay and Mediterranean penne pasta with Tuscan chicken. The airlines will also offer Seattle Chocolates.

The selections available will vary depending on the flight and the time of day.

Starting April 27, the airline will bolster its Seattle California flights to offer more convenient and frequent flights.

Last night I was at Costco in Tacoma getting a lifetime supply of garbage bags and on my way out I noticed the store was selling Crocs in bright colors – green and pink, among others.

The today I read this from Bloomberg News:

Crocs Inc., the maker of colorful clogs with holes, said it has no plans to sell its products to Costco Wholesale Corp.

“We have not sold Crocs-branded products to Costco nor have we authorized any of our customers to sell our products to Costco,” the Niwot, Colorado-based company said today in a statement distributed by Business Wire.

“However, we have discovered instances where we believe our products were being sold indirectly to Costco and we promptly terminated those relationships upon learning of that behavior.”

It's certainly not as romantic as a message in a bottle.

But mysterious canisters of fumigants likely used to kill rats and pests have been washing ashore in Ocean Shores and Ozette.

"I don't think that's what Sting had in mind when he wrote the song," Kim Schmanke, spokeswoman for the Washington Department of Ecology, said this morning.

The DOE received a call this weekend from a newspaper reporter in Ocean Shores, said Kim Schmanke, the agency's spokeswoman.

Apparently people participating in a beach clean up event had found a few of the canisters and wanted to know what they were and where they came from.

The U.S. Coast Guard and the DOE are now investigating those very questions.

Schmanke said the canisters resemble containers of fumigants placed in the cargo hold of grain and other types of ships to ward off pests.

The contents could pose a threat to people who handle them – though the DOE is unsure how harmful the chemicals are.

"Beach goers should not handle the canisters because they contain toxic chemicals," the agency advised today.

The DOE picked up at least three on Wednesday from people who had found the containers.

But agency is hearing that the canisters may have been washing up on beaches for the past couple months.

The canisters are about 12 inches tall and have red or white caps. If you've found one, call the DOE at (360) 407-6300.

Shares of Washington Mutual Inc., the largest U.S. savings and loan, dropped as much as 10 percent today as Standard & Poor’s lowered the lender’s credit rating and said another cut is possible.

Shares of the Seattle-based firm fell $1.04, or 8 percent, to $11.76 at 7:08 a.m. in New York Stock Exchange composite trading after falling to $11.50.

The stock has lost 30 percent in the past seven days of trading.