A flight informally dubbed the "Nerd Bird" because of its many techie passengers is flying again between the two tech hubs of Seattle and Austin, Texas.

The flight, formerly flown by American Airlines, is now being flown by SeaTac's Alaska Airlines. American abandoned the route in a systemwide downsizing.

The first Alaska flight on the route took off Monday.

Alaska plans to inaugurate another "Nerd Bird" flight Sept. 2. This flight will link Austin with the capital of Silicon Valley, San Jose, Calif.

The airline is offering limited bargain fares on the flight ($99 each way from Seattle and $89 each way from Austin). The airline is also offering double frequent flier miles on the non-stop flight through Oct. 15 from Seattle and Oct. 31 from San Jose.

Forbes magazine in a new study ranks Seattle and Portland among the top dozen cities nationwide where housing vacancies are rising the quickest.

The magazine ranked Seattle eleventh among the nation's 75 largest metro areas in vacancy changes. Portland was 10th on Forbes' list.

At the top (or at the bottom, if you prefer) was Kansas City, Mo.

The the two cities are seeing their housing vacancies rise at a relatively high rate, the magazine said, total vacancies are less than in many other cities across the nation.

Alaska Airlines' saw a small increase in paying passengers in July over the same month last year, an encouraging sign after months of declining traffic.

Traffic for the year is down 5.4 percent.

Some 1.79 million passengers flew on the SeaTac-based carrier in July this year compared with 1.788 million last year during July.

That increase in paying traffic coupled with a 5.4 percent decline in available seats upped the percent age of seats filled on the average flight from 79.7 percent in July 2008 to 84.3 percent in the same month this year.

Meanwhile at Alaska's regional partner airline, Horizon Air, passenger traffic dropped 8.3 percent while available seat-miles fell 12 percent. That meant Horizon's planes had a greater percent of seats occupied in July 2009 (80.6 percent) compared with July 2008 (77.3 percent.)

The state Department of Financial Institutions has filed charges against a Gig Harbor man seeking to revoke his license to sell securities because of "dishonest and unethical practices."

The department alleges that Michael D. Montgomery mishandled the investments of an elderly man who was his client.

Montgomery borrowed $546,000 from that client while he was acting as the manager of his financial affairs. In addition, Montgomery purportedly wrote $105,070 in checks to himself from the man's accounts supposedly for power of attorney services.

After the man's death, Montgomery wrote $225,982 in checks to himself from the client's estate for further estate services, the state claimed.

The state acknowledged that Montgomery did repay $320,737 after he sold his own home.

Montgomery couldn't be reached for comment Tuesday.

Montgoverment is a former registered securities salesperson with Wachovia Securities Financial Network and an investment adviser for Mutual Service Corp., the state charges say.

Anticipating tepid business and pleasure travel demand this fall, SeaTac's Alaska Airlines and its sister carrier, Horizon Air, today announced new autumn bargain fares.

Here are some examples:

San Francisco, Oakland and Boise: $49 each way
Denver, Los Angeles, Santa Barbara and Sacramento: $69
New York City and Dallas: $109

These fares are one-way without taxes. Taxes on a roundtrip to Oakland or San Francisco add some $21 to the fares.

Similar bargain fares are available from Portland.

Expect rival airlines such as Southwest, Virgin America and Frontier to match those low fares.

Tickets must be booked by Aug. 14 for travel between Sept. 14 and Dec. 16. Lowest prices are not available on Friday or Sunday flights.

In today's Wall Street Journal, Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren talks about the economy and the retail business. Here's a couple of the questions from the article:

Do you think about lowering your average selling price or changing your product blend, as some of your competitors have done?

Here's the challenge. We have [a men's pants brand], and they typically go out the door between $29.50 and $32.50, with all the coupons and everything. We and the manufacturer together agreed to mark them down to $21.99 or something like that. Selling like hotcakes. Every other pants around them stopped selling.

So we were getting tremendous sell-through at low price points and no margins. And I am not making my pants sales for last year, because my average sale dropped by 30%. It's really hard to make the math work. I have to have 30% more transactions on this product to break even.

Are you worried that customers are trained to wait for discounts, particularly after last holiday season?

I'm not worried about it. I'm counting on it. If we get an upside surprise, that would be a wonderful thing. But they will not forget the value they had last year.

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