Consumer Confidential: Stores, cellphones and flight delays

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Here’s your thrilled-it’s-Thursday roundup of consumer news from around the Web:

-- Are we recovering yet? Economists say we might have taken a baby step closer to good times last month when consumers showed a bit more willingness to spend a little do-re-mi. A preliminary tally of retail sales showed a 0.1% increase -- extremely modest by any measure, but still the first gain since July 2008. Economists say consumers remain wary about spending too much, but are gradually coming to think that the sky may not be falling after all. We’ll see about that as the holiday season kicks into high gear.

-- The head of the Federal Communications Commission says we face ‘a looming spectrum crisis’ if we don’t find a way to squeeze out more bandwidth for wireless devices. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the federal government is already tripling the amount of spectrum available for commercial use to handle an expected surge in wireless traffic as more video and other bandwidth-heavy content head for people’s smart phones. But that’s still not enough. Genachowski says he’s open to ideas about how to make the world a more iPhone-friendly place.

-- Here’s a little something to ponder as you wait (and wait) for your next plane ride to take off: Lengthy airline delays are now twice as common as they were in 1990, and things will get only worse as the economy slowly rebounds. This according to our friends at the Brookings Institution, who say a variety of factors are conspiring to make air travel even more unpleasant than it currently is -- as if that was possible. The researchers say high-speed rail represents one possible solution to our increasingly crowded skies. They also like the idea of airports charging fees for rush-hour flights. Nice.

-- David Lazarus