Originally Posted by
ijgordon
How could you ever have justified given CO your business? Regardless of CO's changes, it costs your clients more money and takes you twice as long door-to-door.
Easy:
(1) CO's SAT-MFE Y fare used to be competitive with WN's SAT-HRL full fare. I don't believe I've taken the round-trip on CO since CO raised the fare.
(2) I work on the plane, so the time preparing for the hearing or deposition is going to get spent whether I'm on the ground at my office or hotel or in the air.
(3) When I have a morning hearing in Edinburg -- which is often -- flying out of MFE instead of HRL saves time because I can't make WN's morning nonstop. For these morning hearings, I usually take the WN evening nonstop SAT-HRL the night before and the CO MFE-IAH-SAT return the next morning. In fact, I often catch a return CO flight by rushing through MFE with 15 minutes or less to spare before departure time.
I try to be very cost conscious with my clients' travel dollars. I've applied discount codes, when eligible, and taken carriers that I otherwise would not prefer (i.e. US to CLT). I stay at mid-range hotels and use multiple search engines to find the best price. I apply discount codes to my car rentals and almost always rent compact cars. So I resent a suggestion that I am acting in my own interest instead of my clients'. All I was trying to illustrate is how, in many ways, CO has become uncompetitive in the intraTexas market.