To our fellow Americans: travel safely, enjoy the long weekend, and don’t forget the mustard!

A video from soldiers returning home from Afghanistan on Delta complaining about $2,800 in baggage fees bubbled up on reddit yesterday and quickly spread around the Internet. Lawmakers Rep. Bruce Braley (D-Iowa) and Rep. Joe Courtney (D-Conn) followed with open letters of support against the airline. At the time, Delta offered three free checked bags to U.S. military personnel traveling on orders (these soldiers had four).

Delta’s response was rather swift and impressive:

After careful consideration, effective immediately, U.S. military personnel traveling on orders in First Class and BusinessElite can check up to five bags at no charge and 4 bags in economy class.

We thought it’d be appropriate to compile a list of all the major U.S. airline policies on bag allowance for military personnel - especially since we know a thing or two about the data behind baggage fees and their history.

Please share this with those who serve as well as their families, along with sites like Military.com for discounts at a wide range of businesses.

Two weeks ago, we published The Definitive Pet Travel Guide. The response was fabulous (thanks for the writeups, Lifehacker & SFGate!) and Shaun went back to work wanting to follow it up with an infographic about pet-travel safety.

In the hipmunk tradition, he did a ton of research and has produced something both awesome and informative. Enjoy! Click here to view in full resolution.

Enjoying our infographics? Here’s the collection of all that we’ve made so far. Anything you’d like to see? Let us know in the comments!

Our office is just a short walk away from the SF SPCA where we’ve got quite a few friends helping dogs and cats find homes here in San Francisco. We were surprised to discover that no one had made a definitive pet travel guide.

So, in the hipmunk spirit, we created one ourselves.

And if you liked this, you’ll love the other infographics we’ve made about baggage fees.

In addition to the infographic below, Florence reminds us that short-nosed dogs are more vulnerable to environmental conditions than other breeds. Hot & humid weather in particular may cause breathing difficulties so really do your homework if you’re traveling in summer with a short-nosed dog and find a safe route if your pup must travel. (More info about this in the sequel infographic, to be focused on pet safety!)

Tip of the hat to Ben Huh for giving me this idea during a chat we had last month. Fun-fact: he is, in fact, allergic to cats.

We’re busy taking the agony out of flight search (and putting the ecstasy into hotel search!) but we got such a great response from publishing the Staggering Look at Baggage Fees Infographic that we asked Shaun to produce another about the history of baggage fees.

• Click here for the high-rez goodness (or click the image below)
• And here’s the creation video of our hotels hipmunk, designed entirely on a trackpad (totally un-related)

Has anyone else noticed rising baggage fees over the last few years? We at hipmunk thought we’d take a closer look at this growing nuisance and turned to the fabulous Shaun Sanders, who produced a quite popular wallpaper remixing our mascot into an Internet-famous shark hunting kayaker photo.

We’re hoping for this to be the first of many hipmunk infographics, so be sure to sign up for our mailing list (below) and subscribe to this blog so you don’t miss a single one of them!

• Click here for the high-rez goodness (or click the image below)
• Click here for the SUPER high-rez version (show off your big monitor or print it out)
• Click here for a cute picture of a chipmunk we found on http://aww.reddit.com (totally un-related)

Tip of the hat to our own resident Chief Scientist, Dr. Chris Slowe, superfan of Edward Tufte, for helping us get it just right.