For those of you who love Whoppers, soon you'll be able to get them in unlikely places.

Bloomberg News reports that Burger King Holdings Inc., the second-largest U.S. hamburger chain, plans to start a new restaurant called the Whopper Bar that will be focused on its top-selling sandwich.

The Whopper Bar will have a smaller menu than regular Burger King locations and will be located in areas with little space such as airports and casinos, Russ Klein, Burger King’s president of global marketing, strategy and innovation, said in a telephone interview today.

Burger King will show the concept to franchisees in May and expects to open several by the end of this year.

Burger King, based in Miami, competes with McDonald’s Corp., the world’s biggest restaurant chain, which is expanding its menu to include more beverages such as lattes and cappuccinos.

The new restaurants will be about 490 square feet, a third of the size of the chain’s traditional locations, Klein said.

The Census Bureau earlier this week released its latest estimates of the population of metropolitan areas around the country.

I've drawn up a little quiz based on those new figures. See how well you score. Some answers could be surprising:

1. What metropolitan area is now the nation's fourth largest after New York, Los Angeles and Chicago?

2. Which of these metropolitan areas' populations are larger than the 3.3 million the Census Bureau estimates live in the Seattle-Bellevue-Tacoma area? Baltimore, Denver, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Phoenix, Minneapolis-St. Paul or San Diego?

3. Of the following communities whose names begin with T, are smaller than Tacoma? Toledo, Ohio; Tuscon, Ariz.; Topeka, Kan.; or Tallassee, Fla.?

4. Rank these Washington metro areas from largest to smallest. Seattle-Bellevue, Tri-Cities, Yakima, Tacoma, Spokane, Olympia, Bremerton-Silverdale and Bellingham.

And the answers are:

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Major domestic airlines have found a new source to tap to help pay their growing fuel bills.

Northwest Airlines today became the fourth major U.S. carrier to adopt a plan to charge most of its customers an extra $25 for checking a second bag. The fees become effective May 6.

United began the trend and was followed by US Airways and Delta.

American Airlines Thursday filed paperwork in Canada to begin charging for a second checked bag, but has yet to implement that policy either in Canada or the U.S.

An American spokesman said the airline is studying the possibility.

Discount carriers Spirit Airlines and Skybus already charge for all checked luggage.

Continental, Southwest and Alaska still don't levy an extra charge for a second bag, though Southwest has lowered its threshhold for free from three to two bags.

The Boeing Co. chalked up five new airliner orders this week, three from Turkmenistan Airlines and two from unidentified buyers. All orders were for 737s.

At the same time, another unidentified buyer canceled an order for one 737.

Those orders and cancellation bring Boeing's total orders for the year to a net of 286.

So far net orders for the 737 are 184. For the 787, the total is 75. The 777 has garnered 26 orders. The 747 has only one 2008 order, and the 767 has none.

Right here at the newspaper in almost-April, there's big, fluffy snowflakes falling outside the newsroom window.

The uncanniness of springtime snow is making it hard to concentrate.

So I thought I'd ask: How's the wild weather affecting your workday or business? Headed home early? Worried about roads? Daydreaming about Christmas trees and warm mugs of cocoa?

In a surprise to practically no one, the British government has named a consortium led by Airbus parent European Aeronautic Defense and Space (EADS) as the winner of a major tanker refueling contract for the British armed forces.

EADS offered a tanker version of its A330 commercial airliner and Boeing had offered a version of its 767. Those were the same two planes that went head-to-head in a contest to win a $40 billion U.S. Air Force contract for 179 new aerial tankers. An EADS-Northrop Grumman consortium won that bid.

The British contract is worth an estimated $26.1 billion.

The EADS consortium had won "preferred bidder" status in 2005.

The Boeing Co. today took action to get a firmer grip on some of the supplier issues that have delayed the final assembly of its 787 Dreamliner.

Boeing said it has agreed to buy Vought Aircraft Industries' interest in Global Aeronautica LLC, a South Carolina facility that assembles fuselage sections of the Dreamliner.

Global Aeronautica was a joint venture between Vought, which makes the sections of the aft fuselage of the Dreamliner in an adjacent plant in Charleston, S.C. and Alenia North America, a subsidiary of Italy's Alenia Aeronautica. Alenia manufactures the center fuselage of the Dreamliner.

Alenia delivers those fuselage sections to Global Aeronautica to be be mated with the rear fuselage sections made by Vought. Global Aeronautica is also charged with installing internal wiring and other systems in the mated fuselage sections.

Vought's South Carolina operations have been mentioned by analysts among the problem children of Boeing's worldwide 787 construction network. Vought replaced the executive in charge of the South Carolina operation, and Boeing has sent dozens of its own engineers to South Carolina to try to improve the operations.

"As a partner in the Global Aeronautica joint venture, Boeing will work with Alenia to apply proven lean manufacturing expertise to continue improving the efficiency and productivity of GA's operations while Vought will focus on its primary business of delivering quality aft fuselage structures for the 787," said Pat Shanahan, vice president and general manager of the 787 program.

First flight of the 787 originally was set for last August, but that event has been three times postponed and is now official scheduled for late June. Analysts expect Boeing to announce yet another delay soon because of problems associated with reworking parts of the first planes.

One of the chief issues delaying the Dreamliner's flight debut was that suppliers delivered the large subassemblies of the airplanes to Boeing's Everett plant without the necessary wiring, plumbing and other systems that were to be installed in their own plants.

Boeing didn't say how much it will pay for Vought's interest in the joint venture.

A new survey by J.D. Power and Associates rates Alltel Wireless as the top quality cell phone provider in three of six national regions including the West.

The problem for Puget Sound area cell phones users: Alltel doesn't offer service here.

J.D. Power's arbitrarily defined western region includes such obviously western states as Washington, California and Oregon, but it also includes such east-of-the-Rockies states as Minnesota and Nebraska. That explains in part why not all providers such as Alltel serve the whole region.

The Power survey ranks Bellevue's T-Mobile in second place in the West followed by Verizon, Qwest, Sprint Nextel and AT&T.

Nationwide, Alltel ranked first in the Southeast and West and tied with T-Mobile for first in the Southwest.

Verizon took the honors in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, and U.S. Cellular was first in the North Central area.

The semi-annual study measures wireless call quality based on seven problem areas that affect overall carrier performance: dropped calls, static and interference, failed connections on the first try, voice distortion, echoes, failure to immediately notify of voice mail and no text message notification.