AirTran Airways A+ Rewards - Outrageous BC fares

Fare is $711, with not one BC seat sold, as of this post. The flight is 14 days out. :confused:

https://tickets.airtran.com/SeatAvailability.aspx?fi=%20829|2012|2|18|6:57%20P M|SRQ|MKE

Fare is $711, with not one BC seat sold, as of this post. The flight is 14 days out. :confused:

https://tickets.airtran.com/SeatAvailability.aspx?fi=%20829|2012|2|18|6:57%20P M|SRQ|MKE
You might want to change the BC to just C as at first I thought BC was redwing to the province I reside in.

The $1,420 round trip between MKE and SRQ is nearly double what Delta wants for first class on the same days..$750.

If they're looking for justification that the added revenue of business class doesn't cover the added cost, pricing it so high that they sell zero seats is a good way to do it.

Give it a week or so. Someone (or something) is screwing around with the fare schedules.

I watched a JAX-LGA OW fare that I was monitoring go from $99 to $112 to $400+ and back to a fully loaded $257 RT.

This last number is within $25 of CO and B6.

Patience

Give it a week or so. Someone (or something) is screwing around with the fare schedules.




I guess so. :)

Today the nonstop for Coach is $109, while BC is $710. That must be some service up front!

It's crazy - I've watched ATL-RIC fares go from $150 RT to $465 on the same dates and other dates go from $150 to $295...and that's for coach.

The symptom of uncompetitive fares was certainly on display last night when checking BWI-ATL for next week:

SWA starts service on Sunday, $59 OW is availble on every flight on Monday, the 13th.

Delta matches on every flight at $59 OW.

AirTran is $204 OW lowest coach fare on every flight.

So I booked Delta in an exit row seat, upgrade eligible at $59 OW.

This kind of "hands off" pricing will be much more effective in getting people off AirTran than many of the other odd merger moves being made by SWA.

The busienss class MKE-SRQ has dipped to just over $1200 round trip. Break out the champagne, huh?

I noticed some remarkably bad coach fares to MSP, which lead me to do a little checking. Here are the lowest nonstop round-trip coach fares on FL from Milwaukee for 2/14 - 2/15 travel. I included miles as well because the shortest AirTran route is also the most expensive.

r/t fare …. miles …….. city
$240 …….. 1113 …….. srq
$252 …….. 0311 …….. dsm
$258 …….. 0896 …….. den
$278 …….. 1524 …….. las
$278 …….. 1460 …….. phx
$282 …….. 0361 …….. cak
$284 …….. 0634 …….. dca
$309 …….. 0738 …….. lga
$326 …….. 1066 …….. mco
$386 …….. 0860 …….. bos
$390 …….. 1075 …….. tpa
$390 …….. 1243 …….. fll
$426 …….. 1845 …….. sfo
$426 …….. 1694 …….. sea
$456 …….. 1756 …….. lax
$468 …….. 1183 …….. rsw
$488 …….. 0669 …….. atl
$504 …….. 0297 …….. msp

Not sure what is up, but $504 for MKE-MSP round trip a week out is remarkable. What's more jaw-dropping is that $504 is the lowest round-trip between MKE and MSP on AirTran or Delta for any days. Doesn't matter if there's a weekend stay, or what off-peak days you pick, or how far out you look...it's $504 round trip for a 297 mile flight.

So much for everyday low fares.

For comparison, MDW-MSP on Southwest has an anytime coach fare of $406 round trip, and with advance purchase is as low as $200 round trip.

I have two guesses on this...

(1) They carry so little local MKE-MSP traffic, that the passengers they will lose by anti-stimulating the market will be offset by remaining passengers who grit their teeth to pay these fares. Delta has a better schedule, but there are some AirTran loyalists who will stay with them. The vast majority of people flying between MKE and MSP are connections, with less than 15% of the seats offered in the market being occupied by local passengers.

(2) They are trying to play nice with Delta in hopes that Delta plays nice with them.

FYI for the latest available period, Q3 of 2011, here's the average AirTran flight between MKE and MSP:

78.7 connecting passengers
21.9 empty seats
16.9 local passengers @ $110.34 fare per passenger

Here's Delta's average, as long as I was running through the numbers

55.0 connecting passengers
16.8 empty seats
30.1 local passengers @ $128.83 fare per passenger

Frontier's numbers don't appear because they were mostly Chautauqua, which does not report in the DoT fare numbers.

The idea of the very lowest local fare being north of $250 each way is quite a jolt to this market, to put it nicely. And it's not an AirTran system quirk because it's the same on Delta, too.


Give it a week or so. Someone (or something) is screwing around with the fare schedules.

I watched a JAX-LGA OW fare that I was monitoring go from $99 to $112 to $400+ and back to a fully loaded $257 RT.

I remember when you posted that, and it was for the morning flight months out, right? The issue was that when AirTran loads a change to a flight schedule, often it only has full-coach inventory at first. The early-AM JAX-ATL flight was the issue. When you were seeing that sky-high JAX-ATL-LGA fare, if you also check markets like JAX-ATL-MDW or JAX-ATL-MEM the same day, that early-morning flight also had full-coach fares. Within a day or so they loaded the full inventory of fare classes, and that's when you saw the JAX-LGA fare go back to more normal levels.

This has been a long-standing thing with the AirTran website, and I've seen times when it took up to a couple of days for the full fare menu to be loaded. So you're right to be skeptical. However these sorts of schedule change loads are always at least a couple months out, and I've never seen it affect flights within a handful of weeks.

I noticed some remarkably bad coach fares to MSP, which lead me to do a little checking.

Thanks, knope, for taking the time to check current fares. For comparison, here are MKE fares from a 12/27/2011 email from FL:


All fares are one-way, no round trip required.

Sale fares between Milwaukee and:


Akron/Canton $59
Atlanta $150
Baltimore $105
Boston $132
Branson $199
Cancun $199
Charlotte $121
Dayton $124
Denver $118
Des Moines $59
Ft. Lauderdale $175
Ft. Myers $167
Houston (Hobby) $104
Huntsville $137
Jacksonville $178
Key West $167
Las Vegas $129
Los Angeles (LAX) $173
Memphis $199
Minneapolis/St. Paul $59
Montego Bay $164
Nassau $139
New Orleans $121
New York (LaGuardia) $145
Newport News/Williamsburg $150
Orlando $128
Pensacola/Gulf Coast $128
Philadelphia $119
Phoenix $123
Portland $125
Raleigh/Durham $131
Richmond $109
Rochester $199
San Antonio $129
San Francisco $191
Sarasota/Bradenton $108
Seattle $172
Tampa $123
Washington, D.C. (Dulles) $121
Washington, D.C. (Reagan National) $121
West Palm Beach $134
White Plains $98
Wichita $144

*Taxes, Fees, and other conditions apply.


For a ridiculous fare, I flew MKE-MSP last summer, for about $39 each way, ai.

I have noticed that all fares are higher, in general. Don't know what is going on.

The usual Tuesday sale fares have been loaded, with more reasonable fares evident. *

From/to MKE:

http://www.airtran.com/sale/MKE.aspx?saleID=

*except SRQ

The usual Tuesday sale fares have been loaded, with more reasonable fares evident.

From/to MKE:

http://www.airtran.com/sale/MKE.aspx?saleID=

Yes, but the "sale fares" have only been valid for Tues/Wed travel for the past several sale cycles. So much for WN bringing lower fares to the ATL market. http://www.airtran.com/sale/ATL.aspx?saleID=

The usual Tuesday sale fares have been loaded, with more reasonable fares evident. *

From/to MKE:

http://www.airtran.com/sale/MKE.aspx?saleID=

*except SRQ

A sale coach fare of $213 each way MKE-ATL. What an outstanding value!

What's even weirder is the fare is actually $161 when you go to book it. Why not advertise the lower, correct fare?

The latest sale ad is definitely misleading. While the actual fares are no bargains, they are much better when you actually take the trouble to book the ticket than what Airtran is advertising.

Example: ATL-PBI is advertised as 178 each way. When you actually try to book the ticket for midweek, it gives you 103 each way.

Look at the ridiculous ATL to Philly or Pittsburgh fares. 220 or so each way. Seriously???? when you bother to book, you can find a cheaper airtran fare. It's like Southwest is trying to kill the Airtran brand as fast as they can

The latest sale ad is definitely misleading. While the actual fares are no bargains, they are much better when you actually take the trouble to book the ticket than what Airtran is advertising.

Example: ATL-PBI is advertised as 178 each way. When you actually try to book the ticket for midweek, it gives you 103 each way.

Look at the ridiculous ATL to Philly or Pittsburgh fares. 220 or so each way. Seriously???? when you bother to book, you can find a cheaper airtran fare. It's like Southwest is trying to kill the Airtran brand as fast as they can

There is no other logical conclusion.

$422 r/t ATL-MCI midweek-only...is a sale fare?

Non compos mentis.

Pushing FL fares into the stratosphere makes the WN inaugural more newsy.

Marketing gold.