Entries in Fares (6)
Delta Hikes Fares
The end of the week brings news of rising fares. Delta Airlines says it's raising round-trip fares by $10 to offset rising operating costs. Yesterday the airline said it had record load factors for the month of August. Jargon Alert! "Load factor" is the percentage of seats that are full.
Kent
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PrintWhere to Find Cheap Seats?
Jessica wonders, "Is there any place you can recommend going to for last minute specials from SGF? I know airlines have these often when there are a lot of empty seats, but I never seem to find them out of Springfield."
No, not really. Someone will tell me about a great deal they found and it always seems they found it somewhere different. In the spring I talked to a family friend who found round-trip fare from Chicago O'Hare to Springfield-Branson for less than two-hundred bucks. I think he used cheapflights.com.
My best advice is to keep tabs on a number of different sources. And you should consider putting a travel agent in your mix. Remember, they keep track of fares day-in-and-day-out. A good one can anticipate price drops.
Cheaper Fares in Tulsa
A columnist for a Springfield paper writes today about the frustration of finding cheaper flights in Tulsa. I felt his pain, but I also got a good chuckle. His misperceptions about the airline business are understandable and commonplace.
In trying to understand why low-cost airline ExpressJet doesn't serve Springfield, he writes, “I saw the airport in Albuquerque and I saw the airport in Tulsa. I wasn’t impressed. They weren't that much bigger than the Springfield-Branson National Airport.”
That’s not quite right. Here’s how the 2006 total passenger numbers stack up:
- Albuquerque: 6,346,159
- Tulsa: 3,163,475
- Springfield-Branson: 862,611
The airports in Albuquerque and Tulsa are much, much bigger than Springfield-Branson. That’s why those airports have lured ExpressJet.
It’s also worth noting that ExpressJet is not a discount carrier running in the same league as Southwest, JetBlue, AirTran, etc. It’s a regional jet company that flys for other airlines. In April it started flying under its own name at cut rate prices. This news story from Reuters sums it up well. It will be interesting to see if the airline can hold on.
Confirmation: Fall Airfares Going Down
As we reported last week airfares are going down for the fall season and now others are confirming it. A three percent decline may not be much, but we'll take what we can get!