SEA777GUY

Paid almost $500 for a RT ticket SEA-DFW leaving today, purchased 2 weeks ago. As flight is out of the N gates, I walked around and did a survey of flight loads. Except for the Hawaii flights, the loads were all in the 30 to 55 range. Maybe AS is trying to keep loads light with high prices.

olouie

Same amount of money with lower passengers is a win for airlines. My flights have been both expensive and packed.

RaingerRain

yeh, I think you right, but super unfortunate for us customers!

djp98374

im thinking weather might be an issue or something got cancelled you had many travelers for.

Dallas has Corp HQs or there could have had a conference there that got cancelled last week.

at this time of year corporations might do corporate strategy planning meetings in the southern parts of USA where weather could be nicer.

jiburi

I think, in the case of Boston, this is DELTA effect. DL just began flying larger 757s between the two cities. I don't know the strategy of this move, except maybe utilization of the 757? Sadly, demand for economical hotels in Boston is still in short supply.

Jiburi

stephem

PDX is showing some real value, as SEA-based flyers we have recently booked SEA-PDX-SJD-PDX and PDX-HNL-PDX for real bargains. When you have 5 pax a rental car 1 or both directions is a pretty big savings. PDX-HNL is on sale for $159 main cabin each way many dates in late March/April and early May. We rebooked our April HNL trip and it went from about $1200 per 2 pax with companion cert to about $430 for 2 w the cert. Definitely worth the drive!

Meanwhile, as others pointed out, SEA to SoCal the last few weeks was crazy expensive, including superbowl weekend when I think I saw some $1300 roundtrips to the LA area from SEA when I looked for fun.

PDXPremier

Thats interesting because HNL-SEA was WAY cheaper than HNL-PDX in late March so we bought the $129 main cabin fare during the last Hawaii sale and booked Amtrak tickets home from Seattle which were only $13.50 each with the recent BOGO Amtrak sale. I'm also having trouble with the SEA-PDX segments on short haul award tickets....seeing the lower awards including a stop in places like BOI between SEA-PDX.

Polytonic

I've been watching SEA-SNA for a while now, and it's just steadily gone up over the past couple weeks (from $217 RT all the way to $448+ RT). Pretty nuts.

djp98374

late March- early May us a low season to hawaii where spring breakers/ cold escapees end and summer travel has yet begun.

you have Valentine’s Day/ super bowl weekend
next weekend was Presidents’ Day weekend.
those two weeks were common school winter break times. Some schools might be off all week while others might have had off a Thu- Mon period Military bases/ fed govt had taken off Friday fir a 4 day weekend if their schedule didn’t already give it.


SNA is home of Disney. If LA was higher they’d move to there for flights. Weekends of March 17-20 Portland and San Diego host mens tourney. San Francisco hosts regional the next weekend.

mtofell

Yeah, I regularly fly PDX>OGG and just grabbed a $159 direct to PDX for early April. Haven't really seen anything close for my return but am hopeful. I noticed they also changed the time of the daily non-stop from PDX to 7AM from 11AM... yikes! That makes for an early morning!! Might have to go through SEA and stop at the glorious N lounge instead.

GW McLintock

SAN-PDX is almost twice as much as JFK-PDX in a couple of weeks. Now I get to fly on Southwest

-J.

xliioper

School system spring breaks also likely contributing to demand (particularly around weekends). Fares become more reasonable starting in mid-April.

stephem

School breaks… yeah for those of us in SEA our hometown airline has long known our kid’s school schedules. Hence why our original SEA-HNL routing was so expensive, even back in August. Sea-SJD is another one that AS loves to bump way up around our mid-winter break.

djp98374

there are both college and school breaks. University of Washington break is later because they use a quarters system while most colleges use two semesters.

Many college it’s in mid March. School districts tend to be around Easter depending on that years calendet
r.

I went to school in the northeast. Because of snow days our break was till 2 weeks surround Easter. If more snow days used, then take them out of Easter break.

thrn there are other events like large conventions.

when Covid first happened there was a viral photo of an emptyDelypta plane from Salt Lake City to Orlando with like 2-3 people on it. The reason it was sooo empty was Orlando was set to host a major conference that was cancelled at the last moment. It’s a conference with vendors that brings in 50,000+ into town ( it only can happen in Vegas, Orlando, chicsgo).

there could be these conventions or corporate meetings/ getaways going on where you get heavy load travels on certain days.

sullim4

Don't underestimate the influence the companion fare has on pricing.

There are certain routes, particularly to sunny or leisure destinations, that allow AS to charge more than their competitors and still sell tickets. Take this example - I booked a January SEA-LIH trip back in November. This is when Omicron was starting to catch on and airlines began discounting January travel.

AS wanted ~$620 per ticket RT for a Wednesday departure and a Saturday red eye return. The non-red eye bumped it up to $900.
HA wanted $350 to connect via HNL, no red eyes.
DL wanted ~$400 for a nonstop.

So for two passengers, the totals were:

AS: $1240 no companion fare, $719+tax with companion fare
HA: $700
DL: $800

You'd be nuts to book on AS unless you had a companion fare - both DL and HA offer better value. However, if you have the certificate, AS at $719 nonstop is a pretty compelling option. Compelling for enough people, too - those flights were booked full when I looked before we left.