Originally Posted by xliioper

A lot of this is driven by the advance purchase requirements of the various fares (at 21, 14, 10, 7, and 3 days out). The legacy airlines do the same thing. For awhile right after Covid hit, they were publishing heavily discounted fares with no advance purchase requirements just to try to fill seats. But they have since reverted to the cheaper fares requiring purchase further out, so that even lightly loaded flights will not have cheap fares available for close-in purchase. The cheapest published fares on LAX-OAK that have no advance purchase requirement are $164 WGA, $202 Anytime, and $232 BS which can be found on ExpertFlyer. That said, there seems to be some sort of discount unpublished fare on this route with no advance purchase requirement as there is a flight today for $108 Anytime, and $168 BS.