I know...I am so ticked that I changed schedules at work and now, between work and school, have commitments every day of the week. If I hadn't have changed schedules, there's a very real chance I would have taken one (or more!) of these trips on an upcoming Sunday.

Here's hoping they'll do this again sometime after the first week of May...

I don't think UA was *new* (at least, they were flying here in the late '90s when I used them several times to go to CA and visit family). I think it was just normal business, with those prices being representative of the level of competition on the route and the relatively cheap fuel prices of the day. Plus, AS was, at the time, starting to develop themselves more in the direction of the LCC business model--simpler fares, lower costs, etc. Now, the competition has virtually vanished, and oil prices were until recently, what, close to ten times higher?

I still hold out hope that the lower fuel prices will result in fares coming back down to reasonable levels soon. I define $250 rt as "reasonable," with $200 rt as "a good deal"--good enough to take a weekend trip for no reason--and $299.99 rt as the upper limit of what I would spend if there were an interesting event going on that would tempt me to attend and $349.99 the absolute maximum I would spend for a spectacular event (i.e. SEA DO ). I sometimes wonder if AS thinks that by keeping prices high, it can set, say, $400 as the new baseline nominal price and then lower it to $350 every so often and make people think that $350 is a great deal. There has to be some reason they are artificially propping prices up, as it can't be the costs--longer transcon flights aren't as expensive, and ANC itself is not an empty route. And it's not even that they're charging what the market will bear--a fellow FTer told me of a Friday evening trip (usually a very busy flight!) back from SEA which was not only practically empty in Y but not full in F--on a route that is usually jam-packed with MVPs and Golds! I know of at least one large group of people--representing probably $10,000 in revenue--to another airline because AS was selling fares [on non-sold-out flights] at an almost 50% premium over the other airline.

If, say, three airlines were sustaining intense competition on the route and found they could legitimately charge $450-$550 rt for 21-day APEX fares, I'd be complaining less, because it would either show the true operating costs of the route (which, I suspect, are much closer to CO's recent $200 fare, if not even below that) or would show that's what the market will bear. But with great [monopolistic] power comes great [pricing] responsibility, so I don't feel bad for asking AS to voluntarily bring back reasonable (affordable) fares on the route they now virtually control. I almost consider it an act of hostage: they're trapping me here against my own free will!

Fortunately, the other airlines do seem to occasionally offer decent specials to places that give me far more EQMs, so while availability is limited, I'll still be able to do at least some travel. I might be looking elsewhere for a mileage program, though, unless AS does something to earn my business back. (They don't need to be the absolute cheapest in town--I still like them enough that I would consider paying, perhaps, a 10-20% premium over a competitor, but certainly not 50-100% like currently!)

Unfortunately, I'm beginning to realize that despite the intense tourism sector here, ANC may just not be a big enough market to sustain the level of service and competition that would bring prices down. One of my major goals in life is to live reasonably close to a major airport where I can be assured of finding good travel deals regularly. ANC may just not be that place.

OK, rant over.