For a brief time period NW offered a OW$59 walk-up fare between DTW & DCA, IAD and BWI - but since then, they’ve reverted back to their “old” pricing, but match NK’s prices during similar departure times. About $500 was the cheapest price on a walk-up DTW-DCA I could find last week, and that included “K” (NK price match) for the outbound and “Y” for the inbound.

Last year I spent nearly 10 months searching for an inexpensive ticket between any DTW-area (FNT, LAN, MBS, TOL) and WAS-area airport so that my intermediate family could join up with our extended family for a pre-Christmas dinner the weekend before. Considering our flexibility, our travel dates (perhaps the slowest weekend of the year) & ample time to purchase the tickets, I thought I’d find a deal - but the cheapest price I ever saw was just over $300, and we purchased it literally hours before departure. On the flight DTW-BWI (757), there was no more than 15 passengers -- half of the us, and most of the other half military members in full-uniform...