Originally Posted by
Cloudship
Another point - have you every TRIED to price out JetBlue? Guess what - you usually end up spending more. People don't care what the lowest published fare an airline puts out is. They only care about what the lowest fare that comes up for the dates and times they put in when searching for a flight. Unless you are booking less than two weeks out, JetBlue and most other LCCs rarely come up cheaper. If people only bought the cheapest airfare, then in fact no one would fly any other route. That just doesn't happen. The problem is that people don't percieve any difference from one flight to another to justify spending any more.
Not only is this absolutely true (ime jetblue often comes up 10-20% more expensive), but it's also true that you generally have to work a little harder to get a jetblue or southwest ticket. I think elgringito has in mind the stereotypical infrequent flier who fires up orbitz or whatever and plugs in his cities/dates and then buys whatever comes up as cheapest. I don't disagree that there are a lot of people who fit this mold. But you can't (at least not last time I checked) buy jetblue or southwest tickets on travelocity/orbitz/expedia. You've got to actively seek out the airline's website to get their fares. So everyone flying jetblue or southwest made an active decision to fly them. Price is still important of course, but it's not just price.
Edit: Now that I read what I'm quoting more carefully I'm not sure I agree with the latter part of it -- but I do agree with what I'm saying
!