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How to Beat High Airfares

nytimes.com

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Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#61

Post by rflrob »

sandipc wrote: post #27
OstiaAntica wrote: post #5

This is unethical, basically he calls for jumping off of flights at layovers, which violates the terms of the ticket. There's even a security issue for the airlines, because they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied. Ironic that the NYT cracks down on people evading its paywall but is selling content on doing the same for air travel.

"they need to check if your bags are flying unaccompanied" For those traveling with checked luggage, this "hop off" tactic won't work, unless passengers want to lose their bags. For those without checked luggage, the airlines have no way of determining whether your carry-on bags are still on the plane or not, short of emptying the plane and reboarding (which I have never seen before).

I've only ever had a handful of connections where I'm on the same plane. More often, I have to haul my stuff halfway across the terminal (and the Availability heuristic* tells me that it's almost never the next gate over) to get on a different plane. Thus, if they never scan my boarding pass, they can be pretty sure my luggage isn't on the plane.

* Yes, I'm aware this is a cognitive bias. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Availability_heuristic

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#62

Post by ecuzzillo »

rexreed wrote: post #59
MatthewB wrote: post #13

How to beat high airfares...drive.

At $4 a gallon, I might even challenge that. I recently calculated the cost of driving from DC to Boston, which is regularly a $240 or so ROUNDTRIP on many airlines. It takes 2 tanks of gas each way (about a 350 mile trip, 20 miles per gallon, 15 gallons per tank). The gas cost alone is close to $240. Even if you managed to burn 3 tanks instead of 4 during the trip, you're talking 45 gallons @ $4 a gallon, which is $…

I don't disagree, but to be fair about the time, there's at least an hour in the DC airport and at least half an hour in the Boston airport, and that's assuming there are no delays on either tarmac due to planes being in the way of your gate or your plane needing something inspected or replaced. So it's more like 2.5-3 hours vs. 7 hours. Still probably worth the flight, depending on how much you like driving, but I think most people think only about the actual flying time, rather than the total time spent dealing with the airport process.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#63

Post by rdtsc »

alienfluid wrote: post #48
georgieporgie wrote: post #4

Book your itinerary as a set of two one-way flights, rather than as a round trip. Every time I have looked, a single one-way is more expensive than a round-trip between the same locations. Maybe I've just been 'lucky'. Edit: no, I'm just ignorant. Turns out domestic one-ways are more proportionally priced versus round-trips.

If your name is even remotely "exotic" (and mine seems to be), good luck checking in online - apparently one way tickets trigger some alarm in the depths of DHS.

That is true. And that basically tells us how stupid and ridiculous our security theater is. Someone planning to blow themselves up will supposedly save a couple of hundreds dollars in order to attract attention to themselves by buying a one-way ticket.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#64

Post by yters »

rhizome wrote: post #47
ghshephard wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody who is commenting here cares (or I strongly suspect they don't care) about the Airlines and people making money. It's the hundred or so people who are sitting on the airplane that are being inconvenienced - possibly missing their own connections later on, that our concerns are for. In general, airlines don't like to have people's checked luggage travel separately from them - and they don't know if the missing…

Then it's a failure of the pricing strategy, developed by the airline itself, if it encourages people to make a rational choice that delays or affects other passengers.

So whenever I can get away with crime it's someone else's fault?

So you're the reason the lawyers don't let us do fun stuff in the US anymore!

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#65

Post by mthoms »

ars wrote: post #51
mthoms wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the principle of charging the maximum price the market is willing to bear , would you consider it ethical for a company like Amazon to charge more or less based on the affluence of the billing zipcode for each customer? /honest question

What's not ethical about it? No one is forcing you to buy. But it's probably not good business, since people get irritated by things like that and shop less.

I suppose it doesn't matter whether the seller thinks it's unethical. What matters, as you point out, is that the average consumer probably would.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#66

Post by kd0amg »

rexreed wrote: post #59
MatthewB wrote: post #13

How to beat high airfares...drive.

At $4 a gallon, I might even challenge that. I recently calculated the cost of driving from DC to Boston, which is regularly a $240 or so ROUNDTRIP on many airlines. It takes 2 tanks of gas each way (about a 350 mile trip, 20 miles per gallon, 15 gallons per tank). The gas cost alone is close to $240. Even if you managed to burn 3 tanks instead of 4 during the trip, you're talking 45 gallons @ $4 a gallon, which is $…

about a 350 mile trip, 20 miles per gallon

That would be 17.5 gallons each way, not 30. The round trip is then 35 gallons, which should easily be less than three 15-gallon tanks. Even 450 miles each way fits in three tanks.

Only for short trips does driving beat the cost of flying

I don't know how much you can stick to highways on that DC-Boston route, but when I drive down to visit my parents, each way is 400 miles on 15 gallons. Even at $4.50 per gallon (and I'd likely pay a fair bit less than that after the return trip), I spend half as much on gas as I'd spend on air fare. Then there's the cost of transit to and from the airports (which I'd get hit with again in the too-likely event of a flight cancellation). I'm not sure I'd count eating as a cost advantage for flying: I can pack a lunch in the car if I want to eat cheap. The only advantages of flying are saving three hours of travel time in each direction and having a couple more hours when I don't have to pay attention to anything in particular (I can read or sleep instead of watching the road).

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#67

Post by kijinbear »

rexreed wrote: post #59
MatthewB wrote: post #13

How to beat high airfares...drive.

At $4 a gallon, I might even challenge that. I recently calculated the cost of driving from DC to Boston, which is regularly a $240 or so ROUNDTRIP on many airlines. It takes 2 tanks of gas each way (about a 350 mile trip, 20 miles per gallon, 15 gallons per tank). The gas cost alone is close to $240. Even if you managed to burn 3 tanks instead of 4 during the trip, you're talking 45 gallons @ $4 a gallon, which is $…

Driving can still be cheaper than flying if you have 2 or more people traveling together. It would be tough to beat trains and buses, though.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#68

Post by rhizome »

yters wrote: post #64
rhizome wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Then it's a failure of the pricing strategy, developed by the airline itself, if it encourages people to make a rational choice that delays or affects other passengers.

So whenever I can get away with crime it's someone else's fault? So you're the reason the lawyers don't let us do fun stuff in the US anymore!

What's the crime here?

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#69

Post by mthoms »

qq66 wrote: post #49
mthoms wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on the principle of charging the maximum price the market is willing to bear , would you consider it ethical for a company like Amazon to charge more or less based on the affluence of the billing zipcode for each customer? /honest question

I think it would be ethical, although bad business. Both price discrimination methods, by the way, are defeatable. You can drive an extra few hours to another airport (have done this many times), and you can get your packages shipped to another address.

Sure both are defeatable, the question is whether doing so is worth the time and effort for the amount saved.

Re: How to Beat High Airfares

#70

Post by tptacek »

sp_ wrote: post #18

Just tried it myself with SEA to MSP (hopping off on a SEA->MSP->DFW route) on July 15th. Direct flight is $230, hop-off route is $150 on exactly the same Delta plane. Now the thing is, if I book SEA->MSP->DFW for Friday and MSP->SEA for Sunday I don't see how Delta could not notice this and block me from flying because of abusing this system. Actually, I have done something like this before. When I moved from Europe…

This is really just a variant of the back-to-back ticket trick, which the airlines already have some countermeasures for. In particular: when you don't get on the MSP->DFW leg, any other ticket you had on the same itinerary gets cancelled. When you show up for your 1W MSP->SEA, they may ask you (annoyed) questions. I used to do back-to-backs (I had to fly DTW->LGA a lot) and they did hassle me about it.

You obviously will have trouble checking baggage doing this, too.

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