Airline ticket pricing

[roadwarrior]

One thing that is really confusing is how airlines price their flights!

I have been checking prices for a couple of months now for my football trips this fall. The Illinois State game in Normal is the ticket that I bought yesterday. Originally I had wanted to fly directly from Fargo to Chicago and drive the 2 hours to get to Normal. Both American and United had the exact same round trip fare of $503.00 for that plan, and the prices have remained pretty constant over the past couple of months. Then yesterday I looked at flying into Peoria, IL with a plane change in Chicago. (Peoria is about 30 miles west of Normal) The price on United was $314.80!

What is wierd is that I will be flying the same flights between Fargo and Chicago that the $503 fare was quoted for. So United will be flying me on two additional flights and getting me about 100 miles closer to my destination at the same time they will be saving me $188!

If anyone else is thinking about going on this trip, there were many empty seats on all four of the flights.

[sambini]

Im thinking of going by Amtrack?

[imabison]

One thing that is really confusing is how airlines price their flights!

I have been checking prices for a couple of months now for my football trips this fall. The Illinois State game in Normal is the ticket that I bought yesterday. Originally I had wanted to fly directly from Fargo to Chicago and drive the 2 hours to get to Normal. Both American and United had the exact same round trip fare of $503.00 for that plan, and the prices have remained pretty constant over the past couple of months. Then yesterday I looked at flying into Peoria, IL with a plane change in Chicago. (Peoria is about 30 miles west of Normal) The price on United was $314.80!

What is wierd is that I will be flying the same flights between Fargo and Chicago that the $503 fare was quoted for. So United will be flying me on two additional flights and getting me about 100 miles closer to my destination at the same time they will be saving me $188!

If anyone else is thinking about going on this trip, there were many empty seats on all four of the flights.

Good research Roadwarrior, in fact we had almost this same discussion over a campfire this weekend, and the prices quoted are accurate. Why can I fly here, for so much less than there.? There is absolutely no explaination for it.

Amtrak is one of his solutions for a game this year.

In the old days you could just jump off at the midpoint, and then catch it again on the return, but its call downling now and they cancel the flights.

[BisonBabe]

I plan a lot of flights for the president of my company. I find that if you check out the airlines websites as well as checking out Orbitz, Travelocity etc you can find some great deals. Often you can get a better rate if you have at least 2 days between arrival and departure. It takes some juggling sometimes

Glad you found a good deal it sure helps to save a little.

[Tatanka]

I have the same problem, especially fling into Chicago. it's absolutely ridiculous. I am going to chicago in mid september for a conference. price quoted all airlines was 850 clams. added a trip to houston ( now fargo-chicago-houston-fargo) and the price dropped to less than 500. no logic whatsoever...

[EndZoneQB]

I plan a lot of flights for the president of my company. I find that if you check out the airlines websites as well as checking out Orbitz, Travelocity etc you can find some great deals. Often you can get a better rate if you have at least 2 days between arrival and departure. It takes some juggling sometimes

Glad you found a good deal it sure helps to save a little.

Weekend stays help a lot as well, plus adjusting the time you leave can have a huge effect on price. The later you can book, the better deal you can usually find too. I like using price monitors and stuff to know when the best deals are available.

FWIW, try out www.kayak.com as it compares most major sites.

[chuckles]

It certainly is a 'game' to find out when the best time to book is. Check out http://www.farecompare.com/ They have some good tips on strategies to use and when the best times to buy (3:30 Tuesday) are. Sites like Orbitz and Expedia don't pull flights from discount airlines (Southwest/AirTran) so if they fly your route it's worth checking out their site directly.

I personally use Kayak's fare alert system. I get a weekly email of my trips that I have set up and the current fare. There are some weeks a fare will drop a mere $7 and the next week it drops $200. I generally try to avoid Chicago's O'Hare. The majority of my flights through there were always delayed and connections would be missed/canceled. Road, that $314 fare is about as cheap as you will find flying round-trip to two smaller airports. I have flown to PIA and BMI multiple times and paid right around a $315 fare from Fargo (on Delta). I haven't seen it dip any lower either. Congrats!

[ndsubison1]

I have the same problem, especially fling into Chicago. it's absolutely ridiculous. I am going to chicago in mid september for a conference. price quoted all airlines was 850 clams. added a trip to houston ( now fargo-chicago-houston-fargo) and the price dropped to less than 500. no logic whatsoever...

supply and demand?

[BigDeal]

supply and demand?

Makes sense. It's often cheaper for me to connect in SLC when I'm flying from DEN to FAR now that Frontier is out of the picture. Of course, United was never cheap to begin with. But... If my wife and I are coming back to the area, we fly Southwest to MSP for $400 and borrow mama and pappas car before paying $700 to fly directly to Fargo... Which sucks because I used to be able to do 2 people round trip from DEN to FAR for $500. Yes, that extra $200 is a BigDeal.

[Tatanka]

supply and demand?

Well, the addition of a second airline based out of O'Hare has resulted in almost double the capacity, in addition to Delta merging with Northwest and flying to both O'Hare and Midway. So supply would seem to be very high - or at least higher than it has been.

As for demand, I can tell you that none of the flights had more than one or two people on them when I looked.

Also, flying out of MSP would cost a grand total of $197 including taxes.

My Econ 101 would suggest that prices shouldn't drop by adding in 2000 more flight miles for the Houston leg, or simply that the usual rules of supply / demand don't apply... Truth is Fargo is one of the most expensive airports to fly out of. Hopefully sometime soon we can land a couple Southwest flights... perhaps to Midway or even to Nashville. This would drop fares across the board.

[IL_Bison]

A coworker has similar issues flying out of Grand Rapids, MI to MSP. If he needs to see a customer in Mankato, its much cheaper for him to fly to Rochester, MN through MSP rather than nonstop to MSP.

I think it may be due to the federal subsidy for smaller airports...Essential Air Service or something like that.

[Bison bison]

It has nothing to do with Essential Air Service.

Rochester is not eligible for the program because it is too close to a hub.

[Tatanka]

It has nothing to do with Essential Air Service.

Rochester is not eligible for the program because it is too close to a hub.

Houston is definitely not eligible.

[BisonAccountant44]

Off the top of my head, I'd say that it probably has to do with a couple things. The big one is that you're paying a premium for the convenience of flying direct. The other has to do with the way they allocate their costs over the passengers on each flight.

Since the trend is for direct flights to be more expensive, they probably allocate the majority of the costs related to each route to the passengers who are traveling on only that route first, and then the remaining costs are split between passengers traveling over multiple routes.

That gives the passenger a discount for dealing with the hassle of connecting flights, and helps them get more butts in the seats of more flights. Of course that assumes they measure their costs on a per passenger basis, and I have no idea if that is the case or not.

[bisonaudit]

From the demand side the airline likely has little worry about filling their legs into Chicago two months in advance. Peoria is probably a different story.

[The_Sicatoka]

I thought they just had a dice cup. What they roll is what you pay.

[Tatanka]

I thought they just had a dice cup. What they roll is what you pay.

Way, waaaaaaaay to logical.

[tony]

A coworker has similar issues flying out of Grand Rapids, MI to MSP. If he needs to see a customer in Mankato, its much cheaper for him to fly to Rochester, MN through MSP rather than nonstop to MSP.

I think it may be due to the federal subsidy for smaller airports...Essential Air Service or something like that.

I remember how happy I was the one time my flight from x* to MSP to FAR was cheaper than the flight from x to MSP would have been. Of course, now I feel a little letdown because it has never happened since.

* Not sure what x was - probably NYC but it might have been coming from overseas.

[Herd80]

I've always been confused on the regional airport cost issue.

This one time (not at band camp, but about 10 years ago) trying to get from Fargo to D.C.

- Fargo to DC through Mpls: $1300
- Drive to Mpls, get on the same flight Mpls to DC: $900
- Drive to Watertown, connect in Mpls (same flight) to DC: $500

Huh? Needless to say, had a nice drive to Watertown

[Civil06]

I remember how happy I was the one time my flight from x* to MSP to FAR was cheaper than the flight from x to MSP would have been. Of course, now I feel a little letdown because it has never happened since.

* Not sure what x was - probably NYC but it might have been coming from overseas.

We booked an overseas trip for this December/January and it was several hundred dollars cheaper to fly out of FAR than MSP. Win-win for me and it saves us a lot of headaches (Although with the extra flight each way and layovers the total travel time will be > 35 hours).

[tony]

We booked an overseas trip for this December/January and it was several hundred dollars cheaper to fly out of FAR than MSP. Win-win for me and it saves us a lot of headaches (Although with the extra flight each way and layovers the total travel time will be > 35 hours).

Holy carp! Ignore this if it's too nosey, but where are you going?

[Civil06]

Holy carp! Ignore this if it's too nosey, but where are you going?

South Island of New Zealand via Auckland via Sydney via LAX via MSP from FAR. Some of the layovers are long (16 total hours for four layovers, 21 hours in the air) but we saved a lot of $$$ by being willing to sit and do nothing for awhile.

Got the tickets for about $1450 each and they're normally $2,300+ to go over Christmas.

[EndZoneQB]

South Island of New Zealand via Auckland via Sydney via LAX via MSP from FAR. Some of the layovers are long (16 total hours for four layovers, 21 hours in the air) but we saved a lot of $$$ by being willing to sit and do nothing for awhile.

Got the tickets for about $1450 each and they're normally $2,300+ to go over Christmas.

What you should try to do is use Allegiant to get yourself to LAX...we paid ~200 round trip direct to LAX during the holidays(BCS national championship week). You can home base from there for cheap I'm sure.

I'm all about using the budget carriers to get me some place else that has cheap flights.

[bisonmike2]

I've always been confused on the regional airport cost issue.

This one time (not at band camp, but about 10 years ago) trying to get from Fargo to D.C.

- Fargo to DC through Mpls: $1300
- Drive to Mpls, get on the same flight Mpls to DC: $900
- Drive to Watertown, connect in Mpls (same flight) to DC: $500

Huh? Needless to say, had a nice drive to Watertown

When we lived in Fargo it was cheaper to fly to Billings out of Fargo, which was Fargo > MSP > Billings than to drive down to MSP and then get on the same flight you'd end up connecting on. I never understood that.

[Twentysix]

I thought they just had a dice cup. What they roll is what you pay.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iEWgs6YQR9A

[roper1313]

South Island of New Zealand via Auckland via Sydney via LAX via MSP from FAR. Some of the layovers are long (16 total hours for four layovers, 21 hours in the air) but we saved a lot of $$$ by being willing to sit and do nothing for awhile.

Got the tickets for about $1450 each and they're normally $2,300+ to go over Christmas.

Have a blast, my parent's spent at month last winter. They flew to LA (frontier) and spent a night there. Then Pacific Air to Fiji, spent 2 nights, and on to Aukland. GREAT TRIP!!