Passengers traveling from eastern Iowa to warmer climates will find easier flying, thanks to two announcements of new service out of the Quad Cities airport.AirTran Airways said Wednesday that the airline will offer a direct flight to Fort Myers, Fla., beginning March 8. Planes will leave Moline, Ill., at 11:34 a.m. on Tuesdays, Thursdays, Saturdays and Sundays and arrive in Florida at 3:30 p.m. EST. Flights will leave Fort Myers at 8:50 a.m. on the same days and arrive in Iowa at 10:59 a.m.Tuesday, Allegiant Air announced direct Tuesday and Thursday service from Moline to the Phoenix-Mesa (Ariz.) Gateway Airport, beginning Nov. 18.Allegiant previously had announced plans to add direct Thursday and Sunday flights to Las Vegas, beginning Oct. 14.Chase online banking service experiences problemsChase’s online banking service was still having problems for much of Wednesday, extending an outage that had lasted for two days and affected millions of customers.In the longest outage the bank has experienced, Chase’s online service went down around 7 p.m. Monday and was down all day Tuesday. Its service for mobile phones was also down, but Chase’s network of ATMs and telephone banking services were functioning normally.Chase, the second-largest U.S. bank, said the problem had been fixed early Wednesday. However, people who tried to log in could not get into the site, and Chase said problems were persisting.Stocks edge higher, keep September rally aliveStocks overcame an early slide Wednesday and closed higher as investors tried to keep a September rally alive.Major indexes had opened lower after a poor reading on factory activity in New York, but turned higher around midday after getting better news on U.S. industrial production.That report showed that the national industrial sector grew for the 12th time 14 months.Microsoft’s Explorer promises zippier speeds.Microsoft Corp. unveiled the “beta” test version of Internet Explorer 9 on Wednesday, the first of a new generation of Web browsers that tap into the powerful processors on newer computers to make websites load and run faster.

Internet Explorer 9, which is free, also arrives with a more minimalist look and a few tricks that start to blur the distinction between a website and a traditional desktop application.Following the lead of Google Inc.’s stripped-down Chrome browser, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 9 comes with far fewer buttons, icons and toolbars cluttering the top of the screen.Its frame is translucent, and as people browse the Web, Internet Explorer 9 can be subtly adorned with small icons and signature colors of the websites being viewed.Europe claims ruling in Boeing case as victory.European officials claimed Wednesday that a preliminary decision by the world’s top trade court found that aid to U.S. aircraft maker Boeing violated international rules, leading to the prospect that the Chicago plane maker may have to forgo or even pay back billions in subsidies.