Originally Posted by
fastair
98% certain the circuitous routing isn't part of the SFO-OTH fare, but rather a cheaper (i.e supply and demand/competition drives much pricing...and there may be more demand for SFO-OTH nonstop, or more competitive pressure out of LAX) LAX-OTH fare with a SFO-LAX fare added to it. It is called in airline terms a "sum of the locals" fare, where you are paying the sum of 2 local fares instead of a single fare, which happens to be higher.
How many businesses do you know that price based on cost, not on what the market will support?
The thing is, there's only two way out of OTH on UAX... PDX or SFO (we live at the edge of the world
). Using "sum of locals" (I had to look it up), SFO-OTH should be cheaper than SFO-LAX.