And prevailing winds do make a difference in flight time. Pilots have often mentioned this in announcing expected arrival time.
I’m counting Lok’s post as a joke - and refraining from mentioning how a plane probably goes faster to get the hell out of LA.
When I get a moment I’m going to go on our corporate travel site and look up round trip fares. I need to know if they really are asymmetric.
When did you do this? Someone at a place I worked 10 years ago did exactly this when commuting from Newark to Atlanta, but I’ve read that airlines have caught on. Maybe if you booked through a company with a contract with the airline, they look the other way.
I’ve just done an exercise computing fares between JFK and SFO - about a month in advance, with a Saturday stay. Some flights didn’t seem to exist in the other directions 
but there was a $170 difference between starting in SFO and starting in JFK - same dates, more or less same time. Starting at SFO was more expensive.
Jet Blue’s price, on the other hand, was exactly the same either way.
I can’t give the prices, but the difference was > 10% - on a rt flight a lot more expensive than the low fare airline. So in certain cases it is asymmetric. I didn’t ask for one way flights, but on one try I wound up booking on two different airlines, which added almost $300 to the fare.
While it does still seem a bit crazy. They don’t hire programmers to figure out this model for no reason.
Some other things to consider –
Landing fees for the airline (are there take off fees?)
Fuel costs at different locations.
Food service.
Maintenance costs at different airports.
Hub location.
Crew costs.
And probably a thousand other variables.
Here is a question – Would a stew… err Cabin attendant be paid more if based out of NYC than say Kansas City?
Some airline folks commute by air to get to their jobs.
But. If it’s a round trip flight, it shouldn’t make any difference.
I guess, like many things, its just what the market will bear.
We need an ‘Ask the Cabin Attendant thread’.
When I did it (see post 51) it was 1999. As I said, the airlines didn’t like it, but at the time it was allowed, although they probably would have punished a travel agent who did it. It may be against the fare rules now.
Sometimes. Let’s say you live in Los Angeles and your company is sending you to New York Monday through Friday for the next 2 months. You start with a one way flight from LAX to JFK. Then you buy a series of round trip JFK - LAX - JFK with the outbound flight on a Friday, the return on a Monday. You get the Saturday night stay discount, and since it’s a round trip, as long as you don’t overlap any of the trip’s dates, you’re good to go. Most airline fare rules allow this.
sorry, missed the 5 minute window, meant to add…
A lot of people do this. I don’t reccomend it for our coporate travellers however, invariably there is a cancelled meeting or a softball game or something that causes the whole delicate scheme to be thrown out of whack and they wind up losing several tickets and having to spend more. All the while screaming at me when I try to explain that because they decided to stay in New York one weekend they now have to start all over again with an $800 one way ticket home on Friday.
Oy.