I’m sure the answer is “some computer algorithm told them to price it this way”, but I was looking up fares on Southwest and a lot of them made no sense. I can understand why early and late flights in the middle of the week are cheapest, but Saturday is almost as cheap as weekdays, except for maybe a random Saturday every month, but Sunday is always extremely expensive. And it’s $10 more to fly from SMF to MSP than MSP to SMF.
And the rental cars- they don’t have 5 or 6 day rentals for some reason. and the weekly rate is about 4.5 days. All in all it’s cheaper by far to take vacations in week spans instead of several days at a time.
That makes perfect sense. When was the last time you wanted to take a weekend trip where you returned on Saturday? And, as mentioned, business travel also has a lot to do with it, as well.
I used to say that airline pricing was determined by casting goat entrails, and totally dependant on what the goat had eaten when.
I think it has improved in the last few years, at least in Canada. And one way tickets are no longer about 66% of a return ticket.
But yes, it is obscure. I understand why routing from Thunder Bay ON, to Vancouver BC is cheaper if I fly through Toronto (flight popularity) than if I route through Winnipeg and Calgary, even though it seems counter intuitive. But explain to me why taking the exact same flights and having a layover in Calgary versus one in Winnipeg changes the price sometimes by $100?
I was looking at prices for flights to Africa recently. British Airways had a good flight. $5000 dollars in business class. Iberia Airways had exactly the same flight. By the same, I mean it was a code share. Same aeroplane, same day, same exact seat.
I had the same thing happen flying to Australia over Christmas. I was on a Delta plane, but it was almost a thousand dollars cheaper to book through their code-share partner Virgin Australia.
I don’t see a problem with this. Would you rather pay 5x or 6x the daily rate rather than getting a price break? You don’t have to keep the car for the entire week.
We looked at flights from Minneapolis to attend a funeral in Texarkana Texas. Besides its own tiny airport, the next closest airports are Little Rock, Arkansas or Dallas-Fort Worth.
Flying from Minneapolis to Little Rock was half the price of the flight to DFW. The DFW flight was non-stop, while there was a plane change and layover to fly to Litlte Rock. The planes changed at: DFW!
I think they frown upon only taking one leg of a flight - you’re not supposed to book to Little Rock but stop travelling at Dallas, even if it saves you 50%.
