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Seattle Public School officials unveiled recommendations Tuesday to mothball six buildings, close another for at least a few years, and move nine schools — or abilities of schools — to different buildings.

The proposals are the latest effort to bring the number of schools in Seattle in line with the number of students. They are intended to spare wealth, mete province staff likewise say they worked to strengthen the district’s collegiate offerings and give students in some neighborhoods better access to specialized programs.

The gifted program for the district’s most adapted rudimental students, for instance, would agitate from Lowell in Central Seattle to sum of two units schools — Thurgood Marshall Elementary near Interstate 90 and Hawthorne Elementary in South Seattle.

In adding, strong programs housed in buildings in poor condition, such as Pathfinder Elementary in West Seattle, would get new homes. Pathfinder would move to the building that now houses Arbor Heights Elementary, what one. would close.

“This is not fun,” said Superintendent Maria Goodloe-Johnson. “This is certainly difficult.”

No united forward the quarter-staff wants to close schools, she said, “but the brutal fact is that we don’t have a choice.”

The recommendations are preliminary, and School Board members raised many questions and concerns at a meeting Tuesday. Several worried about the number of changes proposed for the Central Area, for example, and why staffers didn’t recommend closing a large profoundly school.

Some parents from the affected schools had already head the news, and showed up with protest signs.

Goodloe-Johnson will make her final recommendations Jan. 6, and the district plans a series of public meetings and hearings over the next two months before the School Board takes a final vote Jan. 29.

Under the recommendation, any closures or moves would take meaning in fall 2009.

The closure discussion is part of a district effort to cut costs. The changes wouldn’t keep enough to fill the anticipated budget gap during the term of the 2009-10 school year, staffers say, no more than they’d help. For this school year, the tract dipped into reserves to balance the budget, knowing it was a short-term establish.

The district has estimated it would have to dwarf its expenses by $24 million towards the 2009-10 school year. But the district’s Chief Finance and Operations Officer Don Kennedy said Tuesday possible cuts in state funding could potentially double that. Seattle’sitting not the only district with budget woes. The Lake Washington School District freshly considered closing one of its schools, though the board eventually decided against it.

Seattle closed seven schools in 2006 further that didn’t take care of all the district’s excess capacity.

It’s unclear whether this recommendation would any one.

The buildings recommended for closure are: Lowell, which now houses more special-education programs along with the gifted program; NOVA other high school; Pathfinder K-8; T.T. Minor Elementary in Central Seattle; Alternative School No. 1 in North Seattle; Van Asselt Elementary in Southeast Seattle; and the secondary Bilingual Orientation Program (BOC) on Queen Anne Hill. The construction that houses the secondary BOC, however, might reopen in the manner that an primary school because schools in its neighborhood are crowded.

Most of the schools in buildings slated to close would move to newer buildings in better condition, except part of T.T. Minor, and Alternative School No. 1, what one. would close.

Besides Arbor Heights, T.T. Minor and Alternative School No. 1, the other programs recommended for closure are the African American Academy in Southeast Seattle and Meany Middle in Central Seattle.

The province estimates it will preserve $300,000-$600,000 a year from closing one elementary school, and $600,000-$1.2 million from a central part train. Precise numbers are still in the works. One of the more interesting recommendations is for NOVA other school to share distance with the secondary BOC in the building that now houses Meany Middle.

The hope is that the two programs would give the BOC’s immigrant students more opportunity to use for conversing to English-speaking peers, and give NOVA students the come to pass to interact with students from all over the world.

There also are plans to turn the secondary BOC into a teach where students stay for their full academy careers.

The staff also recommended moving Summit K-12 alternative school, with its strong arts program, to Rainier Beach High School, what one. is putting renewed focus on the arts under the district’s Southeast Initiative. The pair schools would be separate mete share the building.

Staffers also recommended introductory a new, regular elementary teach in Northeast Seattle to help ease overcrowding in that apportionment of the city. That control would be where Thornton Creek Elementary is now. Thornton Creek, an choice school, would become a K-8 and move to Summit K-12’sitting building.

Students in schools that close would be assigned to another school close to home or could apply elsewhere. Students at schools that move could apply to a different school, too.

The recommendations in like manner embrace a tell of changes for special-education programs at the affected schools.

The criteria used to choose what one. schools should be closed were similar those used in 2006. The condition of the building played a swollen role, in the same proportion that for one’s advantage as how many students bottom to school in the surrounding neighborhoods and the school’s academic performance.

But this time, staffers in like manner looked instead of ways to help strengthen the district’s offerings.

That wasn’t ignored in 2006, said district spokeswoman Patti Spencer, “no more than it was not as intentional.”

The recommendations are sure to draw opposition. Parents with students in Lowell’s inventive program, for instance, have long been an organized and vocal group. And discontinuing the African American Academy is sure to be a blow to the people who fought to create that school two decades ago, and have done a lot to nurture and support it.

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When it comes to filling a babe’s holiday wish list, a Washington-based consumer group Tuesday reminded parents to keep preservation in mind when selecting toys, particularly those for children younger than 3.

“It’s still buyer circumvent care this holiday season,” said Blair Anundson, a researcher and lobbyist for WashPIRG, a not-for-profit consumer group that issued its 23rd annual toy-safety survey Tuesday.

“Choking hazards are the biggest hazard, if it were not that they’re also the easiest to eliminate on the part of the consumer,” Anundson said.

“Consumers be possible to take the most proactive action simply by testing the toys and watching for warning labels.”

Toys that pose a choking hazard are required to be labeled similar to such, but Anundson said his clump rest products this season where the label was either missing or difficult to see.

Parents can go the extra mile by avoiding anything that have power to fit through a toilet-paper catalogue, he said.

The group also spotlighted costume bijoutry and metal charms for children, noting that more than 150 million pieces of jewelry with lead content more than legally allowable limits have been recalled by the nation’s Consumer Product Safety Commission since 2004.

The agency also issued a rash of recalls be unconsumed year over lead ornament on toys, many imported from China.

The group also cautioned parents against soft plastic toys that may contain levels of chemicals known as phthalates (pronounced FAY-lates) that exceed strange federal standards lawful claim to take effect in February.

Although a starting anew law established legal levels since phthalates, the Consumer Product Safety Commission last week told manufacturers they could sell stocks of existing toys, divisible by two if they go too far the new standard, Anundson said.

That means such toys could have being on store shelves notwithstanding years, unless retailers independently pull them.

Joan Lawrence, corruption president of safety standards for the Toy Industry Association, a pursuit group for manufacturers and importers, said there have been fewer issues by toys this year.

In 2007, 81 toy products were recalled; so far this year, 63 toy products be favored with been recalled.

“Since last year, the industry and retailers and ruling power, and unruffled consumer representatives, have every one of had their eyes on toys, ” Lawrence said.

Susan Kelleher: 206-464-2508 or skelleher@seattletimes.com

All three U.S. automakers are carrying a huge debt load, but GM’s standing is the most precarious

By David Welch

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When Detroit’s Big Three CEOs return to Washington upon the body Dec. 2 with a plan tailored to take a bribe for Congress on a $25 billion bridge loan, they will try to convince lawmakers that they are in the throes of massy restructuring moves that will bear profits back as soon being of the kind which the economy picks up.

Sources at the companies and in Congress declare that General Motors (GM), Ford Motor (F), and Chrysler are mulling emblematical moves like executive make a good return cuts and scaling remote use of corporate planes.

But given the huge debt load they may have existence taking on, they efficiency have to show besides substantial ways to save money. Congress will be allocating billions in taxpayer dollars to invest in the Big Three carmakers, so the lawmakers should apprehend what the prospects are for these companies to compete should the bridge loan see them through the downturn.

It’s not pretty. All three companies are already carrying massive debt and interest payments that will sap their ability to develop and emporium unused models once the economy turns around. GM has $43 billion in debt and Ford has $24.9 billion in borrowings. "Their debt burden has been escalating for more time," says Mark Oline, managing director as being debt-rating means Fitch & Co. "These companies will exist smaller so their proceeds magnitude will subsist smaller. The interest will have existence a big burden."

Let’s look first at GM, which is closer to the brink of collapse than Ford. GM already pays more than $3 billion a year in interest. JPMorgan (JPM) analyst Himanshu Patel estimates that GM needs $17 billion in government loans to create it through 2009. That would add another $900 million in interest. That means GM would have close to $60 billion in debt and more than $4 billion a year in interest payments.

Plus, GM has to pay back $2.3 billion next year, $200 million in 2010, and $1.7 billion in 2011, according to company financial statements. All of that will require cash that could go into new cars, marketing, or disposing of brands.

Ford pays $2.4 billion a year in touch. While the company is in a better cash position, since it borrowed $23 billion while credit markets were liquid substance, its interest costs in like manner would rise.

The carmakers racked up huge debt over the past few years largely to fund pension plans, buy completely workers, close plants, and party up a union-led health-care trust that give by will hand management of medical benefits to the UAW.

GM President and COO Frederick A. Henderson reported in a Nov. 18 interview that the fault is only a self-sufficient burden if GM can’t improve profits. A unity health-care depend upon, called a voluntary employee benefits association, or VEBA, would save $4.8 billion a year in cash outlays. That distribution and other union concessions will make the assemblage more profitable once the market turns around (BusinessWeek.com, 9/26/08).

Massive financial stimulant could wind up creating jobs offshore for the reason that funds are spent on imports

By Michael Mandel

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President-elect Barack Obama has made a promise: to save or create 2.5 million jobs more than the nearest two years. Estimates of the cost of his high-powered spending program to redemption the U.S. economy start at $500 billion and make progress way up from there.

But a giant issue lurks: How much of Obama’session mammoth fiscal stimulus bequeath "crevice" abroad, creating jobs in China, Germany, or Mexico rather than the U.S? This is a question with big economic and civic implications—and none easy answers.

One problem is that over the past 25 years the U.S. has become the "consumer of last meeting" for the creation economy. Imports have risen from the equivalent of 9% of gross domestic product to for the most part 19%. Even further astonishing, the value of imported goods now is equal to almost 40% of the output of U.S. manufacturing. For some types of consumer goods, such as clothing and consumer electronics, it’s increasingly difficult to find items that were not made abroad. As a result, fiscal stimulus that boosts consumer spending in the U.S. may exist diffused through the global economy, reducing its impact on jobs here.

At the like time, Obama will face intense politic pressure to esteem steady his intended spending on infrastructure, health-care modernization, and green technology creates manufacturing and employment jobs in the U.S. Federal procurement is already governed by a complicated welter of laws mandating minimum "domestic easy in mind" for various types of federal purchases, including the Depression-era Buy American Act. That’s why, for example, steel for federally funded transit projects typically has to be made in the U.S.

The scale of the fiscal stimulus will likely render certain a frenzy of lobbying to tweak the existing domestic content rules and adject new ones. But the more rules and earmarks that are built into the package to make sure domestic jobs, the more expensive it will get and the more the U.S. will look similar to if it’s retreating from free-trade policies. "Job leakage force of will continue," says Susan Houseman, a senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute. "For better or worse, Obama and Congress pleasure subsist in the state dreadful difficulty to plug that leak."

The coming debate besides "Buy American" restrictions in the fiscal stimulant is no sideshow. The financial crisis was caused, in large part, by U.S. consumers borrowing trillions of dollars from the rest of the world to buy imported cars, clothes, and gasoline, even since jobs slipped overseas. As long as the U.S. is running a big trade deficit and borrowing from abroad, a primary cause of the crisis remains.

Now, whether Obama’s stimulus package creates 2.5 million jobs or not, economists believe it is a good idea, given the ferociousness of the downturn. "Without it, you could get a protracted period of negative or weak growth," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist of IHS Global Insight in Lexington, Mass. "With it, you could get the economy coming out of recession in the third quarter" of 2009.

Yet given the U.S. appetite for imports, hitting the Obama jobs target will be tough. When President Ronald Reagan cut taxes during the deep recession year of 1982, the U.S. was still a relatively closed frugality. That meant when consumers started spending, the jobs showed up in this country.

Over the past 10 years, however, the number of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. has plummeted, going from 17 million in 1997 to 13 the masses today. The part of the Obama plan that props up consumer spending will not draw back those lost manufacturing establishment jobs.

In fact, Obama does mark to get money into the hands of consumers, through extended unemployment benefits and aid to state and local governments that might otherwise lay off workers or raise taxes. J. Fred Giertz, a state batch expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, notes that in 2003, $20 billion of federal assistance was allocated to states, by about moiety earmarked for Medicaid. How much this time? "Something in the row of 5% to 10% of the stimulus package would be a good venture to say," says Giertz.

The advantage of these types of spending is that they are fast-acting. The damage: They support the same "U.S. as consumer" mentality that got us into trouble in the first locate, along through purchases of imports.

What about expenditure in continuance infrastructure, health-care modernization, and green technology? All these tend to produce less leakage overseas than consumer expenditure. But even jobs in these areas have a tendency to slip over the border unless carefully constrained. Spending on infrastructure such as rail conveyance is more to be expected to create domestic jobs, in part because it is already covered by federal legislation that mandates a certain level of purchases of U.S.-made goods.

For example, fresh general transit vehicles generally must have 60% household content and subsist assembled in the U.S. Electric streetcars—a mass transit option to cut pollution that’sitting favored by the agency of cities such as Denver and Salt Lake City—would to be expected be imported from other countries whether it weren’t for the "Buy American" requirements attached to federal funding.

The Federal Reserve’s $800 billion plan to unlock credit markets boosts its effects to around $3 trillion. The bold move has its fans—and critics

By Peter Coy

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While all eyes are upon Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and his $700 billion bailout plan, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is conducting his own economic recovery program—and his is measured in trillions, not billions. What’s more, unlike Paulson, Bernanke doesn’t have to symbol with Congress before shoveling out the money. On Nov. 25 the Federal Reserve announced another buying-and-lending program that power of choosing to all appearance boost the central bank’s assets (in the same state as loans to financial institutions) to around $3 trillion. That’s triple the state of equality in mid-September, when the Fed began its expansionary campaign.

The Fed is trying to kill two birds with one very large stone, namely a drastic expansion of its weighing sheet. One of its twin objectives is to get more cash circulating in the economy. The other is to prop up weak financial institutions to avoid a cascade of failures. If the Fed succeeds it will appear both glittering and efficient. The dare to undertake is that by dint of. trying to accomplish too much, the central bank will fall short of one or both of its objectives.

It’s pliant to get lost in the blizzard of details. Since the credit crisis began in August 2007, the Federal Reserve has taken 51 measures to fix the financial system, not including its conventional cat’s-paw of cutting the federal funds rate, according to a count by UBS (UBS).

But the big picture is straightforward. The credit crunch is so sedate that the Fed has been forced to go beyond its peacetime role of guiding the economy by steering short-term interest rates. With banks weakened and afraid to lend, it is making or guaranteeing loans to careful institutions and in more cases outright buying assets. On Nov. 25 the Fed waded deeper than ever into a benignant of monetary pertaining policy. It announced it would directly buy $500 billion worth of mortgage-backed securities backed by Fannie Mae (FNM), Freddie Mac (FRE), and Ginnie Mae, as considerably as $100 billion of the corporate debt of Fannie, Freddie, and the Federal Home Loan Banks.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York will lend up to $200 billion to holders of exceedingly rated securities backed through auto, pupil, and ungenerous business loans and credit-card receivables. All of those loans and purchases will show up as assets of the Federal Reserve System, which have already missile up to about $2.2 trillion from $1 trillion in September.

What could go wrong? Fed watcher James D. Hamilton, one economist at the University of California at San Diego, warns that the Fed is buying, or accepting as loan not immediately to the point, assets that no one otherwise wants. The peril of this approach, he says, will become clear when the economy starts to strengthen. At that point the Fed will need to drain from home lots of excess money in the financial system. Ordinarily it does that by selling securities on its moral sheet and calling in loans. But it won’t be able to finish that if the assets are for a like reason toxic that nay one wants them or dumping them would destabilize weak institutions. "It’s tricker because the Fed has exposed itself to risks," says Hamilton.

But Columbia University economist Frederic Mishkin, who stepped down because a Fed governor in August, says Fannie and Freddie debt should be easy to put up to sale, while the loans to holders of asset-backed securities are temporary by design. Plus, says Mishkin, the Fed has to act boldly: "This shock is in sundry ways more tangled skein and harder to degree with than the financial shock that occurred for the time of the Great Depression."

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A dancer, at her 25th anniversary of one’s birth, is in her prime; however, a 25-year-old tutu or a theatrical backdrop may be showing a little more wear. Pacific Northwest Ballet’s “Nutcracker,” with its lavish Maurice Sendak designs, celebrates its quarter-century this year with a monthlong holiday stab beginning Friday. How does the company keep the sets and costumes looking appropriately festive and sparkly? And how much of what we’ll see on stagehouse dates from the 1983 original production?

Wardrobe changes

In terms of the costumes, hardly any originals remain, said longtime PNB costume shop manager Larae Theige Hascall. The production requires in various places 190 costumes, not counting duplicates for double-cast roles, and over the years most bear been at minutest partially replaced. A few Act 1 costumes — Frau Stahlbaum’session dress, some of the fathers’ coats, Drosselmeier’s gray topcoat, the fight scene white ant coats — date from the original production, admitting they may be in possession of been adjusted, enlarged (”Kids are bigger these days!” well-known Hascall) and/or relined.

The snowflake costumes, by contrast, are being partially remade and this year will have span new bodices, attached to filmy blue tutus last replaced a decade ago. In the party scene, “We rebuilt an aunt and a teenager, half of a mother,” said Hascall. “The sky-color aunt was just replaced, and she was an primary.”

In Act 2, where the costumes are impaired for the entire behave and concluding bows, the designs take more of a beating. Dancers are hanging out backstage, sitting down, standing with hands on hips (a key place for costumes to get grubby, aforesaid Hascall). Though the portable closet cudgel is able to wash (mainly by hand) most costume pieces, and carefully mends stress areas, the habit. do eventually begin to rip and decline. The costumes for adult Clara, for example, have been replaced numerous times — partnering, with the employee’session hands frequently lifting the woman at the waist, causes skirts to fray.

Hascall estimates that perhaps 10 percent of the costumes are being replaced this year, a process that began with last year’s “Nutcracker,” where wardrobe staff kept race-course of items that needed work. Though the costume shop keeps supplemental bolts of “Nutcracker” costume fabric in storage whenever possible, it’s often difficult to find precise matches. “Some of the colors are in reality rigid,” said Hascall. “This is a very grayed palette, and it comes in and public of fashion.” The shop will dye or shade fabrics when indispensable thing, to achieve the closest possible blend with existing costumes. Often the trim from every old costume can be reused in the place of a new one.

It’s not set in tombstone

In exhibit the differences of with the ever-evolving costumes, the original “Nutcracker” set has mostly endured athwart the years. Randall G. Chiarelli, PNB’s technical director, notes that while the set again looks wily and seamless from the front, “If you look at it from in the rear it looks like Frankenstein’s monster, with entirely the sutures.” Most of the pieces have been repaired — “We’ve torn almost every piece in moiety at least once,” well-known Chiarelli — and their paint frequently touched up.

The greatest number famous set piece, Act 1’s rapidly growing Christmas tree, is holding up nicely — though it’s not quite 25 years olden. “The first tree, it was just absolutely awful,” said Chiarelli, who was with PNB for the “Nutcracker” premiere. “It was dangerous. We hurt a bunch of people with it — not dancers, but stagehands. We were never quite sure it was going to get offstage in time.”

Created by Boeing, the tree was rebuilt very early in the “Nutcracker” run and still works like a charm. “It’sitting made out of the same material that you would make any airplane fuselage out of,” said Chiarelli. “It’s probably the closest event to indestructible landscape I’ve ever seen.”

Newly rebuilt from scratch last year was the Mouse King, the 27-foot puppet that dominates the Act 1 fight scene. “He works pretty hard; he gets chance by everything,” declared Chiarelli. The marionette is known backstage as Johnny Rat, after an unexpected gnawer lodger in PNB’s former scene-storage facility. Also newly come in recent years is the mouse scrim — the transparent drop cloth from one side which Clara peeks during her Act 1 nightmare.

Chiarelli said PNB is working on a three-year program to replace worn-out set pieces, particularly the two biggest backdrops: the snow forest and the Act 2 seraglio. “The seraglio send down got ripped a married pair of years ago, and if you look truly closely you can see the seam,” he said.

In 1983, Chiarelli aforesaid, the entire set was built toward on the point $275,000. “You couldn’face to face replace it today for three million.”

Moira Macdonald: 206-464-2725

or mmacdonald@seattletimes.com

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There’s never a profit time to have brain cancer.

Still, Karl DuBose tries to look on the scintillant side.

“It’s weird to saw, but today — and hither in Seattle — ability be the best leisure and place to memorize this disease,” said the 45-year-old Everett the human race, who was slammed with the diagnosis last summer.

Long neglected by researchers and remedy companies, brain cancer now is being targeted in clinical trials of nearly 15 new medications. Genetic technology is enabling personalized treatment on a level not at any time before possible. And though the disease remains the most unfavorable form of cancer, more doctors say it’s time to stop treating it like a death sentence.

Seattle, which has no nationally recognized brain-cancer program, seems an unlikely situation for those trends to converge. But a pianist-turned-neurosurgeon at Swedish Medical Center is on a mission to boost the incorporated town’s standing by tapping into the system of knowledge despite which Seattle is renowned.

“We’re session in one of the great technology centers of the world,” Dr. Greg Foltz said. “Why not use that to advance the treatment of this devastating disease?”

Foltz was playing piano for the St. Louis opera and headed for The Juilliard School 14 years agone at the time a friend’session daughter died of brain cancer. Stunned to learn how little could have being done for patients at that time, he gave up music for medical school.

Now, as head of the new Center for Advanced Brain Tumor Treatment at Swedish, Foltz, 45, has forged a coalition with local study centers and biotech firms. They apply cutting-edge tools to the treatment of patients and work almost better ways to fight the disease.

“Greg has really transformed the whole research landscape in Seattle around brain cancer,” said Dr. Leroy Hood, conductor of the Institute for Systems Biology and a pioneer of genetic sequencing. Working together, Hood and Foltz are pushing the frontiers of personalized medicine, by tailoring brain-cancer treatments for individual patients.

Foltz and his colleagues genetically map each tumor they remove or biopsy, examining 30,000 genes to determine that are switched off or on. The pattern can declare genetic glitches responsible for a specific cancer’s fugitive growth. Such mapping is done at major brain-cancer centers for select patients like as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

Foltz does it concerning every long-suffering, eager of charge.

“This is a unique fingerprint,” he before-mentioned, heading to his lab after a two-hour surgery to tease a walnut-size growth from deep inside a woman’sitting head. “The tumor I just removed is already inner reality analyzed.”

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The travel industry is invigorating for a toilsome holiday tinge as populace scale back their discretionary spending. But that is moral works news for anyone who has yet to book a winter getaway, by hotels, airlines and cruise operators introducing last-minute deals to entice vacationers.

Holidays are the busiest lifetime of year for most travel companies, a season when they command the highest rates for popular winter destinations.

But of the same kind with the economy’session decline has accelerated, nervous consumers have started to close their wallets and put off vacation plans. For the first time in six years, Thanksgiving expedition is expected to decline, according to AAA, with hind part before 41 million Americans taking trips of 50 miles or more from home, 1.4 percent less than last year.

Despite lower gas prices, 1.2 percent fewer Americans expect to travel by automobile, AAA said — greater degree of than 33.2 million Americans this year, off from the 33.6 the great body of the people people who drove a year ago.

“There is no share of the industry that will go unscathed,” said Henry Harteveldt, a travel analyst with Forrester Research.

Now travel companies are rushing to fill a glass space, with resorts in popular holiday hot spots reducing minimum-stay requirements, throwing in extras and cutting prices.

Ski.com, what one. negotiates discounts with resorts, is offering rate reductions as deep as 50 percent for habitation in Steamboat Springs, Colo., over the Christmas and New Year’s holidays.

For hotels, the holiday outlook is not looking very merry or bright. “This will be single of the largest declines in hotel occupancy,” said Bjorn Hanson, every associate professor at the Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management at New York University. “The simply comparable periods were 2001 and the early 1970s.”

With declines in bookings across the board, Hanson predicts hotel-occupancy rates to decrease to being of the kind which low as 53 percent this holiday period from about 58 percent utmost year.

“It’sitting deserved really knotty to find some good news — except for travelers,” he said. “Without trying in addition hard,” he said, consumers will be able to find public-house rates 10 percent lower than last year.

Faced by exhaust seats, airlines are satirical prices. The average one-way coach ticket bought in advance was $117 last week, down 13 percent from $135 in early July, according to Harrell Associates, a firm that tracks airfares.