The future is now-ish.

Air travel is about to become ridiculously practical thanks to Skybus, a new airline that's running on a self-serve model. You book your flight online, check in at the automated Skybus kiosk at the airport, and go. Not only does this cut out the hassle of flying, but it significantly lowers the cost as well. Flights start from just $10 one way. Ten freaking dollars. They also help keep costs down by only flying into smaller, less busy airports. After a few minutes of playing on their website, it looks like the further in advance you book your flight, the closer you get to that $10 mark. If you want anything extra (checking your bags, getting a meal on the plane, etc.), you can add it, but you don't pay for anything you don't need. Spiffy, yeah?

It's not perfect yet. The company is based out of Columbus, OH, so the only flights available go to Columbus, so if you want to go to any of their other destination cities, you have to go through Columbus. And right now, there are only 9 other cities, but that list is expanding, and once they get bigger, they should start offering non-Columbus flights (word from the Colorado rumor mill is that a Denver-area Skybus system is in the works). Also, you usually don't get a choice of what time of day your flights leaves, which might be a problem if you're on a business trip, or somesuch, where you're on a tight schedule. For the casual traveler like me, though, this could easily become the best way to avoid ungodly gas prices. If they just added Denver and Fort Worth, I'd be set.
Just for fun, we checked on a flight from K.C. to (you guessed it) Columbus. For two people to fly out on August 21st and come back a week later would cost a grand total of...(drum roll, please)...$81.60! Heck, that's cheap enough to fly to Columbus just to see what it's like there.