[DavidMn]

Originally Posted by Chilly Willy

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

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