The right flight, straight to your cell

ExpertFlyer.com has rolled out two new features that will make it easier for its subscribers to find the perfect flight.

Premium subscribers, who pay $9.99 a month or $99 a year, now can pull up the website on their Internet-enabled cellphones. They can check the status of up to 20 alerts programmed to track the availability of flight upgrades, award tickets, and particular seats on almost any airline's flights. They can also scroll through saved flight queries, an option catering to road warriors.

The mobile and desktop edition also now allow basic subscribers, who pay $4.99 a month, and premium subscribers, to select preferred airport connections when searching for flights.

This feature, which returns flight options with alternative and nontraditional routing - rather than the most direct routes - is designed for travelers who want to redeem award travel or upgrade offers, or rack up miles to reach frequent-flier status.

The companies, owned by the Taylor family in St. Louis, will give customers at participating US and Canadian locations the option of paying an extra $1.25 per rental to fund certified offset projects that help remove carbon dioxide emissions from the atmosphere. The companies will match all customer offset fees dollar-for-dollar, up to $1 million. Enterprise plans to extend the program to Europe in mid-2008.

If all of the 20 million to 25 million annual customers tack on the offset fee, their contributions combined with the corporate matching donations would offset about half of the carbon churned out by the fleets of Enterprise, National, and Alamo, the companies said.

NICOLE C. WONG