While searching for an inexpensive roundtrip fare from Dayton, Ohio to Bangkok, Thailand with an early December 2009 departure and a return in early April 2010, I noticed the following fares:
1. On NWA (DAY-DTW-NRT-BKK), the advertised cost (on 7/1/09) on the NW website is listed as $2,267.26.
2. On UA (DAY-ORD-NRT-BKK), the advertised cost (on 7/1/09) on the UA website is listed as $1,211.30 (and it was $1,171.21 one week ago).
This price discrepancy is confusing for me. Can anyone tell me why NW thinks someone might purchase a $2,267 ticket from their website when a UA ticket is about $1,000 cheaper for essentially the same trip taking about the same amount of time? Yes, I know, the NW cost through a ticket consolidator would be substantially less. But why is NW doing this to itself when a comparison with UA is so easily done? I used to be a devoted NW passenger for this particular trip, but no longer.
It is up to each airline deciding how much they want the seats to be sold. It depends on how many seats they have available, what equipment is used, who has already booked how many seats, etc -- a whole host of factors. Dayton is quite a small destination -- maybe one airline has more seats available than the other. In addition, it is quite early, so the prices can change a lot.
Airlines are not grocery stores that match each others' prices no matter what. There is a whole slew of considerations behind the ticket price.
Just go with whichever airline+price you find of most value to you. You could also look to larger airports to see if it's different.
A few years back I found a difference in NW's favor: $1,246 BOS-SIN round trip, versus over $4,000 on AA. It works both ways. Despite being a loyal AA flyer and wanting the miles to reach EXP, I went with NW. (Made EXP anyhow, but it was close.)
There's a current thread somewhere about how QF and AA charge about $20K for business class seats between the U.S. and Australia, versus about $5K on competitors, on dates the OP of that thread wants to fly.
Airlines have multiple fare buckets per service class. Even if two airlines' bucket structure and fares in each bucket are identical, one may have sold out all its cheap seats while the other hasn't.
Aside from this, every airline tries to maximize its revenue given the unique characteristics of its route structure, its customer base, its business strategies, its partnerships and so on. Sometimes this results in large price differences.
Underlying all of this is this general principle: if you want clear logic, air fares are the wrong place to look!
Some people might be willing to pay a premium to avoid ORD (high risk of delay and misconnect, resulting in perhaps a day's delay when connecting to an overseas international flight), but a $1,000 difference is a rather large premium.
Well, I just flew J class on an I fare on AA SFO-NRT for $2300. Fare from SJC was $1000 more. UA and NW were $3300. JL and SQ were $5500. Guess which one I chose?
Trying to rationalize airfares is like wrestling with a pig in the mud. Enjoy the ride.
__________________
When authorities warn you about evils of sex, there's an important lesson to be learned. Don't have sex with the authorities.
Anytime you can fly to BKK for around $1500 or under its a pretty good deal. AA and Northwest have had the cheapest fares for by far this year. Not flying to BKK though its Manila been for me. My current ticket with NW this June was just over $1000 CAD and stops in Nagoya not NRT. Both times booked through consolidators. Try TourEast.com to get super deals from time to time. Maybe your local ticketing agent can match the website prices for NW. Good luck
Not a bad summary of the three key points, but doesn't go into the dynamic adjustment of both prices and bucket sizes over time. It implies, though it doesn't exactly state, that bucket sizes are fixed. They're not. If a flight isn't selling as well as the computer model originally forecasted that it would, lower-fare buckets may be expanded and thus re-opened after selling out. This is a big part of why a less expensive fare may become available closer to flight time.
(I researched this topic while writing an extended example in an MIS textbook a few years back. Aside from reading everything I could find that had been published on yield management and fare setting, I had that section validated by an industry insider. I'm fairly sure the information is still accurate.)
I think the NW pricing gurus might have read this thread because today, 7/2/09, perhaps just to show that they are in charge, have confidence in their algorithms, and know what they are doing, they raised their price for the DAY-DTW-NRT-BKK route in December from yesterday's price of $2,267.27 to $2,336.26.
I have no doubt that these NW pricing schemes were put in place by folks a whole lot smarter than I am, but sometimes I find myself wondering about the definition of "smart."
By the way, I actually went ahead and purchased the UA flight for the $1,171 offered price last week
I think the NW pricing gurus might have read this thread because today, 7/2/09, perhaps just to show that they are in charge, have confidence in their algorithms, and know what they are doing, they raised their price for the DAY-DTW-NRT-BKK route in December from yesterday's price of $2,267.27 to $2,336.26.
I have no doubt that these NW pricing schemes were put in place by folks a whole lot smarter than I am, but sometimes I find myself wondering about the definition of "smart."
By the way, I actually went ahead and purchased the UA flight for the $1,171 offered price last week
When you talk about NW these days, you are really talking about DL, a whole different kettle of fish, which regards passengers more as self-loading cargo.
