The sale fares are good for travel Sept. 27-Dec. 15 and any day, except Friday or Sundays, with blackout dates of Oct. 5-11 and Nov. 18-28. Here's the all the fine print. Prices pretty much reflect the basic JetBlue discounts. Some one-way fares from Boston's Logan International Airport to: Baltimore, Newark, N.J., and Richmond, Va. $39; Chicago, Washington (Dulles), Pittsburgh, and Buffalo, N.Y. $44; Washington (Reagan), New York (JFK) $49; Raleigh-Durham $54; Charlotte $64, Jacksonville, Fla., $89; Bermuda $99; Denver, Nassau, and San Juan P.R. $119; Phoenix $129, Austin, Texas and Las Vegas $139; Los Angeles, Aruba, and San Diego $149; and San Francisco $169.

Remember, there are restrictions and to get these fares you need to buy by midnight.

This morning both JetBlue and Southwest launched fall fare sales, with slightly different terms.

To get the JetBlue discounts you must purchase before Sept. 8 for travel between Sept. 13 and Dec. 15, any day except Friday and Sunday. Seven-day advance purchase may be required and there are blackout dates. Here is the fine print.

For Southwest, you need to buy before Sept. 9 for travel through Dec. 14, with 10-day advance purchase required. Special prices are good on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Here is the fine print.

The prices look pretty good but it will pay to shop around as I would expect competitor airlines will try to match fares on selected routes.

By Paul E. Kandarian, Globe Correspondent

Sofitel Luxury hotels has reintroduced its popular “Chic Picnic” package at select properties in New York, Washington, Chicago, Amsterdam, Paris and Rome – pretty terrific places for any picnic – where guests booking a minimum four-night stay get a gourmet picnic basket as well as one night’s stay for free. The special runs through Aug. 31 and includes room, late check out, and the gourmet basket stuffed with appetizers, main course, pastries, wine or champagne, and soft drinks and water.  The least expensive property would be Sofitel Chicago Water Tower, with rates starting at $146 a night, and the most expensive is Sofitel Paris Le Fauborg, which starts at $426 a night.

Yesterday we wrote about a one-day JetBlue fall sale with one-way fares as low as $39 from Boston for travel through Dec. 15. The carrier has extended that sale until midnight tonight. No wonder. That decision comes after Southwest and American also launched sales of their own that run until midnight tomorrow night for travel through Dec. 14. The sales all come with restrictions (some have 10-day advance purchase restrictions) and all have blackout dates and limits on travel days. But it looks like the best and widest range of discounts and destinations are available though JetBlue and American. Here is the fine print for JetBlue, American, and Southwest. Start shopping.

A New York developer is planning to open what it's calling New York City’s first gay hotel, THE OUT NYC. Now obviously there have been other hotels in the city that could fairly be referred to as "gay hotels,'' so what makes this one different?

"What makes THE OUT NYC a gay hotel is the comfort level and tailored amenities for the community,” said Ian Reisner, managing partner Parkview Developers, the company behind the project.

Plans call for the complex, situated on 42nd Street between 10th and 11th avenues, to include a 105-room boutique hotel,11,000 square foot XL NIGHTCLUB, and a café and restaurant called KITCHEN.

The nightclub is expected to be completed first and is slated to open in the fall of 2011. This part of the project has been guided by John Blair and Beto Sutter, who gained attention for creating the Saturday night party at The Roxy. The club will feature an LED wall, two dance floors, and a stage.

Developers plan to complete the hotel and restaurant sometime in 2012. The complex, which will also feature a 5,000 square foot wellness center, will offer various types of function space to accommodate smaller parties as well as large events and weddings. Parkview officials say they are hoping to benefit from New York's recent decision to sanction gay marriages.

First, the deal. Southwest has sprung a sale. You must purchase before Friday and travel is good June 1-Oct. 5, with blackout dates of June 30, July 2, Sept. 1 and 5. There is a 14-day advance purchase requirement and best prices apply every day except Fridays and Sundays. Here's the fine print.

Now a few words about sales. I used to include a series of caveats about discounted fares in every blog I wrote about deals but stopped because it began to seem redundant. But based on comments we've been getting lately it seems that we might need to repeat them periodically.

When an airline puts seats on sale, it doesn't necessarily mean that you can't get a better price for your destination. A lot depends on what the competition is like on various specific routes and whether the route you want is a key one for the carrier holding the sale. When a airline does launch a sale, competitors often will try to match, at least.

So what should you do if you happen to be in the market for a flight? When a sale is announced, go check out the fare but also look around. For starters, just to get a sense of the competitive environment, get on a fare aggregator like kayak and plug in your dates and compare (but don't assume what you're looking at is definitive; aggregators don't necessarily have prices from all the airlines -- kayak, for instance, is blocked from Southwest's schedule). Also move your travel times and dates around --- it's usually cheapest to fly midweek and Saturdays.

Remember, airlines launch sales to ensure that a good base of seats are filled. They very, very, very seldom, if ever, discount all seats on all flights to all destinations. That means sale seats are limited. So, it's possible that you may not be able to get a seat at an advertised rate on your planned day of travel; but if a competitor is trying to match sale fares you might be able to snag a better deal elsewhere. Or if your route is one that a competitor values highly -- and offers many flights to --- and doesn't want to get beat .... you get the drift.

Bottom line: Always shop around. But also consider that it is getting tougher to get great deals. So if you know you are going to travel and you see a good fare jump on it.

A group of university scientists with expertise in imaging and cancer are questioning the safety of full-body X-ray scanners used by the Transportation Safety Administration.

TSA officials have said that the radiation from a scan is equivalent to the amount received during two minutes of flight, and Rapiscan, the firm that makes the machines, argues that scans are safer than eating a banana, which contains potassium that is very slightly radioactive.

But a letter sent to White House science adviser John Holdren from five professors from the University of California, San Francisco and a sixth from Arizona State University argues that evidence made public of the system's safety is neither complete nor persuasive. The missive, first reported by ProPublica.org, a nonprofit investigative journalism organization, also asks why the TSA won't make scanners available for testing by independent scientists.

TSA's full body scanners use so-called backscatter technology, a fast-moving X-ray that bounces off the skin and creates an image of the passengers body. The beam does not pass through the body so the skin receives most the radiation exposure. The system has been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration, National Institutes for Standards and Technology, and Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, according to ProPublica.

The group of scientists raising doubts about the scan's safety point out that the Johns Hopkins lab didn't test an actual airport machine, instead it used a system configured like one previously tested by TSA. They also noted that the device used to measure radiation levels, an ion chamber, could get overwhelmed by the high amount of radiation emitted by the backscatter device in a short period of time and might not provide accurate readings.

ProPublica reported that a number of scientists, including some who believe the amount of scan radiation to be minimal, say that more safety tests should be run, given TSA's plans for widespread use of the system.

Photo of full-body scan at Logan International Airport by John Tlumacki/Globe Staff

There are solid discounts, but the travel window is tight (May 24 to June 22), blackout dates (May 26-31), and other restrictions. Here's the fine print.

The prices, however, while not off-the-hook, are pretty good. Some sample one-way fares from Boston:

$39 to Baltimore; $44 to Washington, DC (Dulles); $49 to Pittsburgh, New York City (JFK), Newark, N.J.; $54 to Richmond, Va., Washington, DC (Reagan); $64 to Raleigh-Durham; $79 to Charlotte; $89 to Jacksonville; $92 to Orlando; $99* to Tampa, Chicago, (O'Hare), Bermuda, West Palm Beach; $109 to New Orleans; $119 to Cancun, Mexico, Denver; $129 to Phoenix; $139* to San Jose, Calif.; $149* to San Francisco, Long Beach, or Los Angeles; $159 to Portland, Ore., or San Diego

By Kari Bodnarchuk, Globe Correspondent

One Paw at a Time, which offers ground-based pet transport service throughout the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, now provides chauffeur service for dogs, cats, and other small animals to and from the Pet Airways terminal in Farmingdale, N.Y. (Long Island), about a six-hour drive from Boston. Pet Airways, a pet-only airline, puts animals in the main cabin on flights between nine cities, including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver,
Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Los Angeles, Omaha, and Phoenix. Pets must be at least 8 weeks old to travel with Marshfield-based One Paw at a Time; rates depend on the passenger and its destination.

781-974-3889, www.onepawatatime.com; 888-738-2479, www.petairways.com

By David Lyon, Globe Correspondent

The Great American Road Trip has been a part of our national psyche at least since the days when Huck Finn decided to ''light out for the territory'' to stay one step ahead of Aunt Sally's efforts to ''sivilize'' him. Samuel Clemens, Huck's creator, knew a thing or two about hitting the road.

The stewards of Clemens' memory, the Mark Twain House & Museum, have wed the road trip with Aunt Sally's civilizing influence in a delightful Literary Pilgrimage through the Northeast. It takes about six days and touches bases with Washington Irving, Walt Whitman, Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Wallace Stevens, Noah Webster, Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, William Cullen Bryant, Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

Among others.

See details at the Twain House's blog. For more literary destinations, check the Writers Houses web site.

Photo courtesy of Mark Twain House & Museum.

By Paul S. Makishima, Globe Staff

If you're planning a trip this summer to New York and are on a budget you are in luck. UK-based Yotel plans to open its first US location in June in Times Square.

Never heard of it? Think Megabus or BoltBus of lodging. The chain specializes in rooms that are stylish, but smaller and at a lower cost. And the WiFi is free. The New York hotel on West 42d Street and 10th Ave. will be full service and will feature 669 rooms.

In an interview with USA Today, chief executive Gerard Greene revealed that the company will offer New York travelers introductory rates as low as $149, and even lower ones for those who sign up on Facebook. Continental breakfasts will be free, and there will be gratis coffee stations on each floor.

Greene said that rooms will be about 170 square feet, not all that small by New York standards. "The Hudsons, Paramounts of New York and even the Sheraton near Times Square -- some of those rooms are only 100 or 200 square feet,'' he said, adding that design features will ensure the rooms don't feel cramped. "The way [rooms have] been designed with lots of mirrors and glass, windows, clever storage and mechanical beds that fold away makes them feel larger than they are.''

By Kari Bodnarchuk, Globe Correspondent

Shop Gotham, which runs ‘‘insider’’ shopping tours for women, has launched a tour for fashion-savvy male travelers. The three-hour Men’s NYC Shopping Tour: Fashion, Home, and Art for the Discerning Man takes visitors into the newly chic Bowery district and nearby SoHo and Nolita neighborhoods, showcasing shops that are popular with New Yorkers. Participants also visit an art or photo gallery, a designer home store, and a men’s grooming emporium. Tours are led by a stylist, who can assist with selections and share the latest fashion trends en route. Tour-goers receive store discounts, meet a local designer, and visit a showroom or sample sale, if available. Tours run Fridays at 2 p.m.; maximum eight participants, $54 per person.

917-599-6650, www.shopgotham.com

Photo: Shop Gotham