I thought I’d take this normally post-less Wednesday to let you know that we’ve rolled out new pricing on Cranky Concierge. Now, instead of pricing per trip, we have pricing per direction. If you’re traveling one way, this will save you money. But for the rest of you it’s likely to mean at least a slight increase. Hopefully you understand why we’re doing this.

You can see the new pricing spelled out at CrankyConcierge.com. I also put together an FAQ here.

In short, Flight Monitoring (formerly called Assistance) is $15 each way within the US/Canada, within the European Union, and within any single country. Global coverage is $30 each way. For an extra flat $30 on top of that, you can get help with Flight Planning as well. Need Urgent Assistance? It’s now a flat $150.

If you’ve used us to find award availability in the past, you know we’ve had great success helping people use their miles. That, however, is a very time-consuming process for us. For that reason, we’re introducing a new Frequent Flier Award Redemption service that costs $90 on top of Flight Monitoring. This is a big increase, but hopefully you’ll see the value that we provide.

There are a couple other changes. For example, if you end up buying a ticket in a premium cabin through us, we’ll refund our fee. We’re also instituting a $30 change fee for bookings that you have us change. In short, we’re trying to better match the time and effort we put in with the price we charge.

Lastly, you can still purchase Cranky Credits for a discount. Each credit is worth $15 and you can now buy in packs up 10, 20, or 35 with up to a 15% discount.

As always, feedback is welcome. If you have any questions, email us at info@crankyconcierge.com or call (888) 747-1011 within the US or +1 707 797 7474 elsewhere.

I know it’s Monday, but I have a long list of reasons for not posting today. Of course, it’s Memorial Day here in the US, but I’m also sick and I’m slammed trying to make sure that our new pricing over at Cranky Concierge is ready for a Wednesday launch. (One way pricing is coming, but that will mean an increase in rates for many of you.) So, for those of you in the US, enjoy the holiday. I’ll be back tomorrow with the latest on Air France flight 447 (the one that crashed over the Atlantic).

Today is US Airways media day and I will be there. I understand there is going to be at least one announcement with good news that travelers will want to hear so if you would like to follow along, follow me on Twitter @crankyflier.

It’s a rare Wednesday post here on Cranky, but there has been some big news around these parts that I wanted to share. The first piece of news is that Cranky Flier was just named the Blog of the Year for 2010 by Flightglobal in its annual Webbies. I was told an official badge was on its way, but alas, it hasn’t arrived in my inbox. So I used my famously terrible Photoshop skills to create my own monstrosity.

Nice, huh? Thanks to Flightglobal and the judges, Mary Kirby (aka Runway Girl) and Addison Schonland (IAG) for picking Cranky. And congrats to pilot site MzeroA and friend o’ the blog, Airline Reporter for joining me on the pedestal.

The other big piece of news is that this week marked my first column for CNN.com. I’ll be writing the weekly “Out of the Office” column for business travelers until they decide they don’t like me anymore. For my first topic, I picked a particularly controversial one:

Why airline fees are good for travelers

So far, there are more than 300 comments, many of them calling me an idiot, moron, or of course, shill for the airlines. And they say civil discourse is dead . . . . Hopefully as the column matures, so will the commenters and we can get some good, substantial discussion over there. Come on by every Monday at cnn.com/travel to join in.

I’ll be back tomorrow with a regular Thursday post. Thanks to all of you for helping make Cranky what it is today.

When I first dropped down to 3 posts a week, I said I’d revisit it after the end of the year. Well here we are, and I’ve decided that I’m sticking with the change. I would love to write Cranky more often, but after looking through the surveys (thanks for filling those out) and talking to a bunch of people, I’ve come to the point where I just don’t see how I can really increase revenue enough to justify me taking time away from other projects that can pay. I’ve got to make a living, so I’m sticking with the 3 day a week Cranky schedule.

I am still writing daily over on BNET (http://bnet.com/blog/airline-business) so if you’re really missing Cranky on Wednesday and Friday, you can come over there as well. I try to get those up in the mornings but sometimes it can take a lot longer to go through the edit process.

I’ll keep putting discussion topics up on Fridays, and I hope that in the future I’ll have things in order to the point where I can ramp back up here to go daily on Cranky. Until then, I’ll stick with Monday/Tuesday/Thursday and I hope you keep reading.