The past couple weeks haven’t been so hot for airline passengers in Europe.

On January 30, Spain’s SpanAir abruptly shut down, leaving some 22,000 ticket holders stranded. It had been propped up with nearly $200 million in subsidies, a situation that was hard to justify given Spain’s precarious financial condition.

At least Spain still has Iberia though, its flagship carrier. Hungary is not so lucky. The Hungarian airline Malev just went kaput over the weekend. This piece in Jaunted says the airline accounted for half the traffic at Budapest’s airport, which surely isn’t a good sign for that city’s tourism numbers this year. (Note to contrarian travelers—that means it’s time for you to swoop in and take advantage of the sale prices.) Maybe it was the branding: the airline’s full name was “Magyar Légiközlekedési Vállalat.”

I’m flying to Hungary myself in April. I actually thought for a few seconds about buying a ticket on Malev because it was one of the cheapest ones. Then I figured out I could easily get a ticket using American Airlines frequent flyer miles. Apparently those aren’t in such demand since American Airlines is bankrupt. Hopefully they can hold on through the spring at least.

Oil is stubbornly sitting at around $100 a barrel and will likely go up rather than down. Iran keeps treating provocation as its favorite sport, a power-hungry nutjob runs Venezuela, there’s civil war and terrorism in Nigeria, possible civil war in Libya, all hell breaking loose in Syria, a contagious financial funk in Europe, and still a very weak housing market in the U.S. that’s keeping our economy from taking off—and our airlines from increasing capacity. Yes, if you want to fly somewhere internationally, you probably need to pay more than you would like or you have to get really good at travel hacking for free trips. That’s the reality of travel in 2012.

The February issue of Perceptive Travel is now out, fresh off our racking up a record six best travel writing awards from the North American Travel Journalists Association. We could just kick back and bask in the glow of our medals, but no, we’re going to keep cranking out interesting, unique, offbeat travel stories for your reading pleasure.

This month Bruce Northam takes us traveling around the Yukon Territory, a place the size of California that has 35,000 people. Want to reinvent yourself or start over? Leave your iPhone in busyland and head north to stake a claim.

Camille Cusumano last brought us the story of a hiker gone missing in Patagonia. This time she visits the seedy side of Buenos Aires at Feria la Salada, otherwise known as the Thieves Market. She won’t be going back…

Becky Garrison, author of Jesus Died for This? tries a pilgrimage to Glendalough in Ireland and finds that it’s going to take some effort to get away from the tourist hordes.

I cue up a worthwhile trio of world music from Brazil and central Africa, while Susan Griffith handles the travel book reviews: two on expatriate experiences in Europe, one with a travel quote for every day of the year +1.

Also we’re giving away a grab bag of travel gear goodies. The newsletter already went out, but you can still join us on Facebook to get in on the action. See the home page for details: Perceptive Travel.

Sometimes this Cheapest Destinations Blog gets picked in some readers poll or an individual writer gives me a shout-out. But for the second year in a row I’ve been named one of the top travel blogs by the North American Travel Journalists Association. This one’s judged on writing and usefulness, not just how many people you can persuade to vote for you, so it means something.

Last year I got a silver, this year I got…the GOLD!

Here’s how it played out, in good company:

Category: Travel Blog

• Gold: Tim Leffel, Cheapest Destinations Blog
• Silver: Gary Arndt, Everything Everywhere, Everything-Everywhere.com
• Bronze: Jennifer Miner,  The Vacation Gals, TheVacationGals.com

Thanks to everyone who has been reading, subscribing, tweeting, whatever. Especially those who were around when I launched this thing, back in the blogging stone age of 2003.

And proving that when it rains it pours, Perceptive Travel positively cleaned up. It won a Silver for Best Travel Journalism Site (behind some obscure pub called USAToday.com) and three of the individual writers won prizes for stories, including a Gold for me and for Amy Rosen.

Onward!

Time to check in with the travel news and blogosphere to bring home some timely news and tips for travelers on a budget.

I’m quoted in this article from Kiplinger Personal Finance: Your guide to bargain travel in 2012. (If you prefer, here’s just the airfare part of it at the Chicago Tribune instead.)

If you’re irked by resort fees tacked onto the room rate at hotels, here’s a piece on who has resort fees and who doesn’t in Las Vegas.

About.com’s Budget Travel site has a nice 10-part post on Travel Myths for Latin America.

And it’s always good for me to post another myth-busting article about crime in Mexico. As in you’re ten times more likely to be murdered in a drug-related crime in our nation’s capital than you are in Mexico City. The Yucatan is safer than Canada. And let’s not even bring up New Orleans…

Will Panama become a hot travel destination? The New York Times thinks so. I’m not so sure. I like Panama a lot, but their tourism promotion efforts are stuck in the past (“The interwhat?”) and they have a habit of spending their money on silly ad slogans. But the pieces are all there if they can get the word out.

How much does it cost to travel in Thailand? As Nomadic Matt found out when his vacationing friends joined up with him, that depends a whole lot on whether you’re a long-term traveler or you’re on vacation. When time is short, double your budget.

Want to take a trip to New York City on the cheap? How about free? No, it’s not a contest. Just pull up this Earthcam website and you can see the Statue of Liberty from its “torchcam” or see the lower Manhattan skyline from the island with the “harbor cam.”

Despite the millions airlines poured into lobbying against it, as of yesterday the U.S. Department of Transportation has mandated that all flights operating in the U.S. must display the entire airfare up front in the booking process. If an airline advertises a sale price, it must be the real total price, not “before taxes and fees.” Since it has become routine for flights to Europe to have as much or more in fuel “surcharges” as the price of the ticket, the D.O.T. could no longer ignore the flood of consumer complaints.

Read this excellent story from Consumer Traveler to get the details. It’s written by Charlie Leocha, whose Consumer Alliance group should get the bulk of the thanks for making this happen.

Besides the honest airfare disclosure, the companies also have to make it easy for you to figure out how much you’ll have to pay to check bags, depending on your flight. All that info now has to be on one easy-to-find page and at the start of the booking screens.

Most airlines and online travel agencies acted in a civil manner this week, sending e-mails to their customers explaining not to be alarmed by higher advertised costs, that they’re just seeing it all up front now instead of having surcharges added when booking. The airline that everyone loves to hate—Spirit Airlines—took a quite different tack though. I got an e-mail from them that looked like this:

In a bout of double-speak that would make George Orwell and Lenin both proud, the company claimed that this law was all a big conspiracy to somehow hide taxes from you so the government could keep raising them. I can’t imagine even the most delusional Tea Party faithful falling for that one since any airline can break out taxes as clearly as they’d like anywhere on their website. But instead of a link to any page explaining the new law, there was just a link to go complain to your congressperson. How bizarre!

As SmarterTravel said in an article about the company’s actions, “Spirit’s overblown reaction to the government’s passenger protection rules—first legal action and now a very public advertising campaign—underscores the carrier’s reliance on a steady stream of passenger surcharges.” Here’s a fuller explanation of what they were claiming and how far removed it was from actual facts.

There are plenty of others out there who look at the airfare as just a way to get you in the door and start doubling or tripling that amount with extra fees and this law won’t help you on foreign domestic flights. So if you’re flying on Spirit’s kindred souls, like RyanAir or Aerobus, you’ll still need to take every advertised fare for what it is: a bait-and-switch gimmick. Here though, the consumers won one over the big corporate campaign contributors.