Airfares!! I just dont get it
 

So anyway, I'm going out to Washington D.C in April for a few days to see a couple baseball games at the new ballpark that's opening there this year. I looked up online for airline tickets, and for the dates I was looking for, National Airport was $525 RT on Northwest. So I did a little snooping and looked up the same RT from Minneapolis to D.C but this time to Dulles. know what? $201 RT!!!! And I found out they have city bus service running right from Dulles straight into downtown D.C, so it's only a minor inconvience. I know there are things like availability and what not that determine the cost of a ticket, but 300 F***IN dollars? Anyone else have a similar experience?

As just one example, I looked into a flight from Dallas to Philly in September or October, just out of curiosity in case I wanted to surprise my folks for the Jewish holidays. With five day's notice, one of the airlines was prepared to charge me less than $400 (usually it's higher when it's less than a week away). In mid-October my uncle was dying; I looked into flights from Dallas to Chicago & the fares were enormous. (Flying to Chicago is typically cheaper than flying to Philly.) In late October, when he died, I paid over a thousand dollars to fly out for the funeral - with a whopping $14 discount due to the circumstances - provided I promised to present the funeral service flyer/obituary at the counter on my way back. They still canceled my connecting flight in perfectly clear weather, they still damaged my luggage (all my clothes arrived sopping wet!) on the way up, & they still misplaced my luggage & delayed my return flight for 12 hours. (I'll spare the details of that.) Plus they were rude about it.
There's always a story when I fly, as my friend Jen loves to tease me.
In my whole life, the best (least stressful) flight I ever took was the one where we got turned around because the pilot announced (while we were in the air) that one of the engines was on fire. But once we took off again everything was pretty okay.:)
Airlines are a sore point with me. Now aren't you sorry you asked?

- Jake

I remember when I was on a flight from Minneapolis out to L.A last June to see Lindsey, we ran into this big storm over the Rockies, and on all the flights I'd been on up to this point, I'd barely had so much as a ripple. But on this one the pilot couldnt get around the storm and we were buffetted around pretty good. I remember at one point the plane dropped like 500 feet from some sort of turbulence.:eek: But after about 30 minutes we finally came out on the other side and everything was allright.

Its not uncommon at all. Especially if you are flying to and/or from a city that isn't impacted by Southwest Airlines (whose presence always drives the price down in every market it goes into).

Minneapolis is notoriously expensive to fly to/from, since a single airline controls at least 70% of the gates. Charlotte (US Airways), Denver (United), and Cincinnati (Delta) too.

Dont wanna hear it! Round trip for my wife and I to New Zealand is costing us $3600.

I guess I wont be complaining anymore about that!:laugh:

haha...yeah well, we are flying from Florida...about as far away from NZ as we can be. I dont think flights to New zealand are ever cheap, unless you live in LA.

Are you flying Qantas or Air New Zealand?

air new zealand baby! I love them. Best airline, hands down.

I've got a Qantas flight from Wellington to Queenstown. They are ok, but they dont beat ANZ.

Let's not forget Philly (US), Cleveland (CO), SLC (DL), and several other "Fortress Hubs," although Charlotte is probably the worst anti-competitiveness-wise, and Philly is getting better with the increased presence of Southwest.

The reason DCA (Wash.-National) is so much more is that it's one of 3 slot-controlled airports in the USA, along with LGA (NY-LaGuardia) and ORD (Chicago-O'Hare). There are a fixed number of take-off and landing slots each day, and with the explosive growth of air travel in the past ten years and the shift to more frequencies with smaller planes, demand has tripled yet supply has remained constant. These slots are sold back and forth between airlines for millions of dollars (not really a bad deal, considering that an arrival/departure slot pair for London-Heathrow just sold for around $100 million + "other considerations").

Fares at O'Hare are going up because the situation there is even worse. Due to air traffic over-saturation, they have actually been reducing the number of slots there. Dallas to Chicago is a double whammy since they're both hubs for American - AA has a lock on the route and nobody can force down the fares, not even Southwest with their big operations in both cities.

Unless you need to fly into DCA specifically, go to IAD (Dulles) and take the bus. For the NY area, I use Newark and take the train. For Charlotte, I use Winston-Salem or Greenville/Spartanburg. It's a little extra drive time, but you make up for it with much faster and easier check-in, security, baggage, car rental, etc.

Lecture Over.

Safe flying,

Chilly Willy (Your resident super-frequent flyer)

P.S. - I also prefer Air En-Zed to Qantas

haha...air "en-zed"....hilarious!

No that is some rock solid information! DO you work in the airline industry in some capacity?

Not in the airline or travel industry, but I travel a lot for my job. A LOT!

Depending on what projects I'm working on, I'm on 300-500 planes a year, all over the world. Been doing it for more than 20 years, so the travel is as much a part of my occupational skill set as my education and experience. I have a fixed budget and a fixed schedule, so I've learned how to get where I need to be, when I need to be there, on the lowest possible fare.

Did France, Luxembourg, and Belgium last week by air and 1st Class rail. $635 total for the week from Boston and back. Doing a southern US swing next week - SC, AL, FL, NC, SC again, then back to Boston - 6 hops, 12 flights with connections, just bought the tix yesterday for around $800 total.

A good place to pick up travel tips or learn about destinations is flyertalk.com. They have forums just like this, but it's all about travel. There are a couple hundred thousand seasoned travelers that can answer any question you have, and an excellent search function to find all the past discussions on your topic.

CW