I was reading some online news site and came across this travel article about how a mix-up in Google News on September 8 caused United Airlines stock price to plunge from $12 to $3 per share, resulting in a loss of about $1 billion on the total stock’s value.

According to the news reports, a newspaper’s online website re-published an old article from 2002 when United Airlines filed for bankruptcy which was later picked up by Google as recent news. When the United Airlines bankruptcy article was seen by it’s stockholders the stock plummeted.

The news fascinated me and I thought you guys might enjoy it as well. Here’s some links to the story if you’d like to read more about it:

http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article4742147.ece
http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-united-old-story-sep8,0,7800230.story
http://www.itworld.com/internet/54847/tribune-blames-google-united-stock-crash

If you haven’t heard already, just this month Delta Air Lines and Northwest Airlines announced they approved a merging which will form the largest airline around the world based on traffic statistics. Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines are the third and fifth largest airlines in the United States. Under the merger arrangements, the new company will be headed by Delta and keep the name “Delta Airlines”. In essence, it seems Delta is taking over Northwest Airlines in this all-stock merger valued at $17.7 billion dollars. The merger still has to be approved by the companies shareholders, as well as go through an antitrust review before the merger becomes final, but I don’t see any reason why the merger would be blocked at this point.

I’m not sure how the merger will affect ticket costs, but since there are still many more major US airlines I doubt it will really have a big impact on the travel industry as a whole when it comes to ticket prices. If you ask me, I think the merger was due to the rising costs of fuel and the current state of the US economy. Just last year both Delta Airlines and Northwest Airlines filed bankruptcy, and I think they needed to do this to keep both companies afloat.  If anything, after the merger  I think the new company will be able to offer better services to its client.