It has definitely been a tough week for airlines, and yesterday Skybus became the third airline to stop operating.

Once again, the main culprits are rising fuel costs and the slowing economy, making it almost impossible for small, low-cost airline companies to compete in the current market. Skybus decided that it would be shutting down all operations as of yesterday, and plans to file for bankruptcy over the course of the next week.

Skybus has not been around for too long. The company started up about a year ago and operated around 75 flights a day. The company had 350 employees working out of Columbus, Ohio, and 100 in Greensboro, N.C.

When it comes to running a tight ship, new airline Skybus seems to have learned RyanAir's lesson on operating lean. According to an article by Marla Matzer Rose of the Columbus Dispatch, the startup is currently serving 80,000 passengers a month with only 5 planes.

The ultra-efficient service shuffles these planes through 11 airports each day on 28 separate one-way trips, for an average of 13.2 hours of flight per plane per day. The worldwide average for the A319 that Skybus uses is less than 9 hours. In the U.S., United and America West, using the same model, fly 11.9 hours a day.

Of course, starting with brand-new planes give the Skybus an advantage in this department, allowing them to shrink the turnaround time between arrival and departure to only 25 minutes.

As an example of this tight scheduling, the article follows the daily journey of one plane:

• Leaves Columbus 6:55 a.m.
• Arrive Portsmouth N.H. 8:39 a.m.
• Leave Portsmouth N.H. 9:04 a.m.
• Arrive Columbus 10:53 a.m.
• Leave Columbus 11:18 a.m.
• Arrive Oakland 1:16 p.m.
• Leave Oakland 1:41 p.m.
• Arrive Columbus 8:57 p.m.
• Leave Columbus 9:38 p.m.
• Arrive Kansas City 10:14 p.m.
• Leave Kansas City 10:33 p.m.
• Arrive Columbus 1:10 a.m.

Hawaii for a buck? Mesa Air Group's (NASDAQ: MESA) go! Airlines has nine-upped Skybus's $10 tickets by offering 2,000 $1 flights to Hawaii. The tickets, which went on sale Monday, were quickly snatched up.

The move is bound to ruffle the feathers of competitors Aloha and Hawaiian (AMEX: HA), who filed a lawsuit late last year claiming Mesa had used confidential information the two had shared with Mesa as a potential investor to launch go!'s Hawaii service. The $1 promotion can only make the fare fight fiercer, good news for vacationers to the sunny islands.

Skybus, the newest RyanAir-model entry into the industry, has gained a great deal of attention for its practice of selling ten $10 seats on each flight. The remaining seats are sold, exclusively via its web site, on a sliding scale, growing more expensive as the plane approaches capacity.

Skybus's severely no-frills approach has put price pressure on budget competitors including Southwest (NYSE: LUV), Airtran (NYSE:AAI) and JetBlue (NASDAQ:JBLU). At a time when passenger traffic is softening and fuel prices skyrocketing, the prospect of a mini price-war among the bottom feeders doesn't seem strong. I can still hope, though -- I really would like to visit Hawaii.

Sometimes an innovation that makes perfect sense economically will get blasted by consumers for emotional reasons that have more to do with perception than anything else. Take flying on airplanes for example, where consumers want low fares but also grumble about stuff like having to pay for the peanuts. Irish carrier Ryanair (NASDAQ: RYAAY) has ultra-low fares, but also little in the way of free amenities: Seat assignments, checked bags, early boarding, and food all cost extra.

SkyBus Airlines will be trying that approach here in the States, with fares starting at as little as $10. It's going to charge $5 per checked bag, and will even sell the right to have your company's logo on its planes (I nominate BloggingStocks).

SkyBus's Rules of Flying sound like they were written by the Soup Nazi from Seinfeld: Bring cash for food, bring a book, don't call us, and don't be late.

Here's what I like about this airline: You only pay for the services you want. People might like the idea of free peanuts and free baggage checking, but, Economics 101 folks: Nothing is really free. Instead of having every passenger absorb the cost of free peanuts, why not just charge the people who want them? It makes perfect sense to me.

We'll see how SkyBus does. It might take some getting used to, but I have to think this is the future of the airline industry.

For airlines, it always seems like a race to the bottom. And, with the low-cost structure of the internet, we are seeing some creativity with airline fares. The latest comes from Skybus Airlines.

The concept is that -- for each flight -- there will be at least 10 seats at $10 a piece. That sounds pretty good for the customer. But hasn't deep discounting been a big problem for the bottom line, or can Skybus be another JetBlue Airways (NASDAQ: JBLU) or Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV)?

Well, Skybus does have about $160 million in the bank (so there is some runway). There are some other tweaks: You can only purchase tickets from the company's website, and you'll probably be nickle-and-dimed on extras (like food, check-in of bags, and so on).

I had a chance to interview Rafi Mohammed, who is an expert on pricing. He runs a consulting firm, Culture of Profit, and is the author of the book The Art of Pricing. He says: "How do new airlines enter a market and give customers a value-based reason to try their service? It always starts with a discount. New airline entrant Skybus is offering discounts in a grand and intelligent style by guaranteeing that at least 10 seats per flight are offered for $10 (plus taxes). Not only have these $10 fares made a huge marketing splash, but they are designed to create loyalty to the Skybus website. Sure there's a good chance that the $10 seats will be sold out, but it definitely makes sense for a traveler to at least check availability when booking a trip to see if luck is on their side. And if that $10 fare is not available, they may stick around to book a $79 fare."

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including the Complete M&A Handbook and the EDGAR-Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements.