Yesterday was “New Runway Day” at three major U.S. airports. Washington Dulles International Airport, Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and my hometown Seattle-Tacoma International Airport all cut the ribbon on new runways.

What do these high-ticket investments in airport infrastructure mean for air travelers? Ideally, improved safety, reduced delays, and space for an extra 330,000 take-offs and landings each year.

We’ll see….

(Courtesy: Port of Seattle)

Of course, who cares if more planes can take-off and land unless you can actually get a seat on one of those planes?

So I was pleased to have a chance to stop by the world headquarters of Yapta this week to check out their poker table and learn about their new service that sends travelers e-mail alerts when frequent-flier award seats become available. As someone who recently spent way too many hours trying to figure out how to “spend” a chunk of expiring miles, I totally get the usefulness of this feature.

You can read about Yapta’s free frequent-flier award search service and a few related tools in a recent New York Times article. Or just sign up, snag a seat, and go try out one of those new runways.

(Photo: Daniel Schwen)