Can Someone Explain Airfares to Me?

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I’ve been flying a lot the last couple of weeks and will be flying again next week.  By some miracle I haven’t been cursed with significant delays or cancellations this time around (knock on wood), but I’m more than a little confused by the airfares I’m seeing.  For example:

  • Flying from Greensboro to New York (Sunday), New York to Chicago (Tuesday morning) and then Chicago to Greensboro (Tuesday evening) would have cost $1,500 (coach or 1st class, which is in itself weird).  By booking the trip through Charlotte the airfare went to $750.
  • Flying one way from DC to Charleston the Tuesday before Thanksgiving cost $320.
  • Flying from Greensboro to San Francisco cost $220 round trip.

That last one really floored me.  Why is it cheaper to fly to San Francisco from Greensboro than it is to fly to New York or Chicago (I checked for the same dates and times)?  And to top it off I connect to San Francisco in Chicago, so it would be cheaper to fly through Chicago to San Francisco than to fly to Chicago and back even though I’m on the same planes.

Some other observations about my recent flying experience:

  • I love flying out of National, which some people insist on referring to as Reagan National.
  • LaGuardia is a hole.  It is quickly becoming my least favorite airport.
  • Getting in and out of Charlotte is easier than I thought it would be, and it takes no more time than it used to take me to get in and out of Dulles when I was living in DC.  If Greensboro isn’t careful they’re going to lose another regular passenger.
  • The big differentiator between airports, to me, is the food service available in the gate area.  All of them seem to have places to sit and eat outside of security, but the problem with LaGuardia and Greensboro is that they only have crappy food stands or hole-in-the-wall joints that serve tepid coffee and day-old sandwiches inside of security.  Blah.

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4 thoughts on “Can Someone Explain Airfares to Me?”

  1. Lex's avatarLex

    Weirdly enough — and you have to eat a lot of restaurant meals with me to understand how truly weird this is — I had the second-best grilled salmon I’ve had in my life inside security at LaGuardia. Within the past year or so, too.

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  3. Jim Caserta's avatarJim Caserta

    My wife and I just flew Charlotte-to-O’Hare. I usually fly out of GSO for business, when my company pays, but we’re flying more and more out of Charlotte for personal travel. It is more driving, but it cuts out a connection for a lot of flights, and a decent amount of cost. I don’t think there is much the airport can do about it, it just comes down to number of passengers coming through and $.

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  4. Jon Lowder's avatarJon Lowder

    Jim,
    For the short term I think you’re right about the airport, but I do think there’s something they can do long term and that is to recruit at least one discount airline. Fares and flights to the northeast were much better when we still had Independence and if we could get a JetBlue, Southwest or Frontier in here I think it would have the same effect for a broader range of flights.
    On the other hand I think the area is in a vicious cycle right now where we continue to bleed travelers to Raleigh and Charlotte, which makes GSO seem like a waste for the airlines. And of course if the Triad were growing in terms of being a destination, whether for industry or personal travel, then the airport would be competitive again in a heartbeat. I guess we just need to open Disney-Triad.

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