I’m trying to plan a vacation to Ireland for this summer. I had set aside a week back in February when prices from Boston to Dublin were around $230 or so each way. I waited a bit to book my flight and the price climbed by almost double.
Given the new prices, I have decided to hold off a bit and hope they drop again.
However, just for fun I went to the Aer Lingus page to see where the prices were at.
Now bare with me here… I can fly from Boston to London Heathrow for $349.00 if done during the week. I can then fly from Heathrow to Dublin for just 39.99. I can do the same in reverse to get back.
Total for above is 990.36 (fees added in), and I get to see London!
Now, if I decide to go straight from Boston to Dublin and back it’s $1,099.30!?
Granted, not a huge difference, but how does this make sense?
Just a WAG, but I assume the Boston - London route is probably much more popular, more aircraft/arliners serving the destinations and hence prices are lower. Boston - Dublin isn’t as popular, hence less aircraft/liners flying that route, and therefore higher prices. Add in an extra charge for the convenience of not having to switch flights in London, and there you are.
I recently flew from Flint to Seattle, with a layover in Detroit for about $300. The EXACT same flight from Detroit to Seattle was $600, double the price.
I chalked up the price difference to Flint really really wanting my business.
It takes about the same time to drive between Flint and Detroit, as it does to fly there, accounting for airport hassle.
Obviously weather is an issue but October-March flights are much much cheaper. I recall last year seeing flights from Washington to Dublin for €89 oneway including taxes.
I’m trying to do almost the opposite. I’m in London and I need to get back to the Denver for my mother’s wedding. Searching United for a one-way ticket (I’m trying to collect miles) gets me a price of $1005. When I switch to a round-trip ticket, it drops to $616.
You usually just have to bite the bullet when it comes to travel to Europe from the US in the summer. For what it’s worth, the US airlines have flights as low as $920 or so (at least a couple minutes ago) so they are cheaper than what you’re finding on Aer Lingus. I would check out travel sites like Travelocity and Fare Compare where you can set alerts for when (if) the fare drops.
I think you need to take into account the inverse cumulative distribution
function of Fisher’s F-distribution having v1 and v2 degrees of freedom
If X has an F-distribution with v1 and v2 degrees of freedom then Pr: (X is less than or equal to x) = P.
The F-distribution is a particular parameterisation of the beta prime distribution, which is also called the beta distribution of the second kind.
It’s actually quite simple, really. This is why I typically fly for pretty much anywhere I like for $8.47 return.
To be honest I would rather bear with you if you are of the male persuasion
Flights are strange things but if you are staying in London I don’t think you will save any money. If you don’t leave Heathrow you will not see much of London.
I’d be surprised if any American carriers could beat Aer Lingus’ price; they’re usually cheapest. Also, I have never had a bad flight with them and like that they serve a real meal during flight and don’t seem to rape customers with a bunch of hidden fees.
The more I think of it, the more I like the idea of going to London first and spending the day, then fly to Dublin that night.
But the inverse cumulative distribution is also tangent to the nodal variance of the mass distribution. Thus, depending on freight loadings, you may be hit with 20% +/- 200% in extra fuel fees at the least.
The most bizarre airline pricing situation I ever heard of was one of my secretaries who was going to fly down to Florida with her sister. My secretary lived in western NY and her sister lived downstate. My secretary was going to take a flight from Rochester to Orlando with a stopover in NYC. Her sister was going to fly directly from NYC to Orlando and they would be on the same flight for the NYC to Orlando leg.
My secretary’s ticket cost fifty dollars less than her sister’s. And this was the actual ticket price not any airport fee.
I figured this thread had to be about route pricing from the title.
My sister used to date a guy who was a programmer for a major online discount travel site. He possessed an incredible memory for flight info: he could look at just a flight number and tell you everything about the flight, from its destinations to its frequency to its on-time record to its price history. And even he couldn’t figure out exactly how airlines calculated their route pricing; he could point to dozens of examples where popular routes which were continually oversold had their prices cut (which of course led to even more overcrowding and overbooking), while unpopular routes had their prices raised, causing further emptying of the planes.
Then there is the whole issue with “instant variable pricing” which he admitted his own company was helping to drive. What it boiled down to was that almost nobody on average flight was paying the same price as the person sitting next to them, and it was mostly based on the time which the ticket was purchased. In the old days, the airlines set a base price for a ticket, and barring a specific promotion, that was going to be the base price no matter when you bought the ticket. But once the discount sites started getting involved, the airlines realized they could start maximizing their capacity rate by slashing fares on specific flights with unsold seats, while raising fares on flights were nearing 100% capacity. At the same time, the discounters were changing how they were charging for tickets, because if they were getting a lot of demand for Route X, of course they were going to do the utmost to try to maximize their profits. All of a sudden the “base price” had almost no bearing on the final cost of the ticket, even before fees and taxes, because the base price was changing almost daily.
The guy did give me one piece of advice that helped a lot when I was searching for tickets in the past, although I don’t know if it’s still true. At the time, most airlines recalculated their base prices on Tuesday morning. If you could get a price which had been recalculated lower on Tuesday afternoon, before the discounters started hyping those tickets, you could get a great deal.
Well, be surprised then, because it’s true…at least on certain dates. Had to know for sure without knowing dates, but I looked at several and delta was the cheapest for all of them. Do a flexible dates search on Orbitz and you’ll see flights on the American carriers for less than Aer Lingus. Some non-US carriers are cheaper too (Air Canada, Lufthansa, and Air France). But hey, if you like Aer Lingus and have their FF miles or whatever, stick with them. On Delta you will get dinner (I’m not sure what consititutes a “real meal” on any airline) and your first checked bag is free, so not sure what hidden fees you’re speaking of.
Airlines use complex algorithms to set prices. This is similar to hotels. Basically what it does is it feeds on the theory that past predicts presents.
For instance, when you go to book a room the computer spits back a price. That price is based on many things
History, what did the flight do on that DATE last year. The year before, the year before that.
History TWO, what did the flight do on that DAY nearest the date. This is different from the above
The first method would say what did the flight do on Wedneday June 2nd. The second says on this DAY last year would be WEDNESDAY the THIRD of June.
Then it calculates things like How many people took the flight at full price, how many people paid rebooking fares, how many people booked but missed the flight, how many people booked this flight XX number of days out. Then it takes into consideration, what was the weather like on this day/date last year.
Then it looks up the competitors flights and sees what they are doing, then it looks up what the prices on the competitors flights were last year.
Then it looks up what the flight is doing NOW.
Then it looks up how many people booked then cancelled.
Then it looks at alternate airports.
Then it takes this data and puts it into a “seed” and every so often it recalulates the seeds. Most revenue manager have the computer recalulate seeds every 15 minutes, but you can do it as often as every three minutes.
These are very powerful database lookups. This is why hotel/airlines have prices that change minute by minute (well almost). The computers are constantly calculating new data .
Very astute. This is why you should always (before actually purchasing your ticket) run a Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to see whether the two empirical distributions (with or without fuel fees) are different or whether one of these empirical distribution is different from the ideal distribution.
You can then book with confidence. Last time I flew to London, the airline had to pay me.
