After serving Butte, Mont. for 19 years, regional airline Horizon Air announced it will halt service to the former copper mining town Aug. 25.

The end of service to Butte was among a raft of schedule changes SeaTac-based Horizon is making to weed out marginal routes and to facilitate its plan to move to one aircraft type.

Horizon announced earlier this year that it will eliminate 37-seat Q200 aircraft from its fleet and sell its 20 70-seat CRJ-700 regional jets. Those actions will leave Horizon with a single type of fuel-efficient aircraft, the propjet, 74-seat Q400.

Horizon's actions are driven in part by the escalating price of jet fuel. The Q400, built by Canada's Bombardier, is the most fuel-efficient plane in Horizon's fleet.

Among other changes on Horizon's schedule:

* An end to the airline's once-daily Billings, Mont.,-Portland flight. Service to Portland will still be available through Seattle.

* A reduction of five flights a day on Seattle-Portland route. That reduction will leave Horizon with 26 flights a day each way between the two cities.

* Daily flights to Pasco from Seattle will be reduced one to six. But the number of seats available between the two cities will remain the same because the airline will substitute a larger Q400 for a Q200 used on one of the remaining flights.

Other schedule changes and adjustments are available on the airline's Web site here.

Online shopping just got a little easier – at least if you like the Gap, Banana Republic, Old Navy and Piperlime.

I noticed this weekend that you can shop the four Web sites together and check out with one shopping cart.

The company announced the change today, saying its created a "universality" between the brands.

Customers pay a flat shipping rate of $7 and orders from Gap, Banana Republic and Old Navy will ship in one box, the Gap reports.

Orders from Piperlime will ship separately and continue to offer free shipping and returns.

The Port of Tacoma has scheduled a meeting for 4:30 p.m. Thursday to discuss the potential environmental effects of building new container terminals and related infrastructure on the Tideflats.

The meeting is part of the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA) public review process for the redevelopment project.

Redevelopment plans on the Blair-Hylebos Peninsula include:

- Relocating the Totem Ocean Trailer Express marine terminal
- Building a new container terminal for NYK Line
- Widening a section of the Blair Waterway
- Lengthening a wharf at Washington United Terminal
- Improving road and rail infrastructure

The meeting will run until 7 p.m. in Room 104 of The Fabulich Center at 3600 Port of Tacoma Road in Tacoma.

Staff from the Port’s Sustainable Development department will be available in an open house format to discuss various aspects of the project.

Project managers are scheduled to deliver a short presentation at 6 p.m.

The environmental review process provides several opportunities for the public to comment on the proposed project. Each review step will be advertised in local newspapers and on the Port’s Web site, with links to draft documents.

The scoping document is available for review online. Comments on the scope of the environmental analysis must be received by 5 p.m. June 6 to be considered in drafting the Environmental Impact Statement.

Comments may be sent by mail to: ATTN: Matoya Scott, Port of Tacoma, PO Box 1837, Tacoma, WA 98401-1837, or by e-mail to sepa@portoftacoma.com.

Gas prices, to almost no one's surprise, rumbled past $4 a gallon over the weekend in Tacoma.

According to AAA Washington, the price of unleaded regular was $4.03 a gallon today in Tacoma. Mid-grade gas hit $4.175 and premium was $4.382.

That $5-a-gallon mark could come by mid to late summer at this pace. Regular gas rose by 32.3 cents since April 27 in Tacoma.

For truckers and passenger car drivers using diesel that dreaded $5 price is uncomfortably close. In Tacoma today, diesel was selling for nearly $4.92 on average.

In Bellingham, diesel was $4.974 a gallon. That's a bargain, however, to truckers who filled up in California where diesel costs an average of $5.124 a gallon today on average.

Overall, Washington gas prices were $4.027 today. That compares with $3.406 at this time last year.

Regular gas prices topped $4 a gallon on average in 12 of 50 states according to the AAA. Highest prices were in Alaska where gas was selling for $4.201 on average for regular. Most of the states where gas was over $4 were on the West Coast, in the Northeast or in the upper Midwest.

The lowest regular gas prices were in Wyoming where the average price of a gallon or regular was $3.751

An airline fare boost started last Thursday night by United Airlines has gained the endorsement of most major carriers and appears to be sticking around.

That fare increase raised fares as much as $60 on trips greater than 1,500 miles with corresponding lower increases for shorter trips.

Now BestFares.com CEO Tom Parsons notes that American, Delta, Continental, Northwest and US Airways have joined the parade increasing the fares.

One important note, those fares are increasing mainly on routes where major airlines have no low-fare competition.

San Francisco to Sacramento in California is one of those routes. The cheapest roundtrip airfare on that 172-mile trip is now $766 on US Airways. From Cleveland to Key West, Fla. on Delta, the least expensive fare is $1,098.

Yet on competitive routes, such as Seattle-San Francisco, roundtrips are available for around $160.

The Cunningham Report has an interesting article today regarding remarks made by Seattle-based SSA President Ed DeNike at last week's Northwest Intermodal Conference.

SSA Containers President Ed DeNike said last week that the Pacific Northwest ports have an opportunity to expand their business in Interior Point Intermodal cargo if "they don't blow it." That's why his company is spending "a lot of money to build a grand terminal at the Port of Tacoma," according to the report.

SSA has partnered with the Puyallup Tribe of Indians to build a container terminal on the east side of the Blair Waterway.

DeNike told folks attending the Northwest Intermodal Conference in Tacoma that his company's customers are looking for ways to avoid calling at West Coast ports, whether it's by going through the Panama Canal or the Suez Canal, the Cunningham Report says.

DeNike noted the increasing cost of moving cargo through Southern California and various pending fees per container.

He also made mention of needing to increase the labor productivity in Tacoma, The Cunningham Report says.

Here's the rest of the story:

Customers are also demanding better productivity, he said. His company is having to guarantee a minimum number of lifts per hour in order to get shipping lines to commit to a contract. The penalty for coming up short is the loss of the contract, he said.

DeNike said he expects SSA to sign an agreement with a major Asian shipping line next month for its terminal at the Port of Seattle. That 20-year deal will include a productivity guarantee, he said.

In the Port of Tacoma, where dockworkers take breaks onboard ships, that becomes a problem. In fact, SSA Marine - which has partnered with the Puyallup Indians tribe to build a private terminal at the port - has talked to union leaders about the need to speed up the process, he said.

Lifts at container terminals average about 30 to 32 per hour at the Port of Long Beach, 35 to 37 at the Port of Oakland, 30 to 31 at the Port of Seattle, 25 to 27 at the Port of Portland, and 25 to 26 at the Port of Tacoma, he said.

Ports America Group VP Walter Romanowski agreed that there is a long-term opportunity for the Pacific Northwest Ports. He noted that it takes six years to get through the environmental process in Southern California and that East Coast and Gulf Coast ports are using the opportunity to expand their business.

Port of Seattle Seaport Director Charlie Sheldon said the Southern California ports and the Pacific Northwest ports operate in different economic environments. He cited the 2005 elasticity study done for the Southern California Association of Governments by Rob Leachman of UC Berkeley.

The Leachman study found that Southern California could charge up to a $200 fee per 40-foot container without losing significant business as long as the money was spent to help smooth out the flow of cargo. Sheldon said they hired Leachman to do a similar study for the Pacific Northwest. He found that a $60 per 40-foot container fee would result in a 30 percent loss of cargo.

For a look at a News Tribune profile of Charlie Hoffman from October 8, 2006, click here.

XBRL in plain English. For a YouTube video, click here.

For comments by SEC Chairman Christopher Cox May 7 at the 17th XBRL International Conference, chick here.

For an SEC press release concerning the impact of XBRL on mutual fund investors, and a video of Chairman Christopher Cox, click here.

For Charlie Hoffman’s XBRL blog, click here.