wandering_fred

Planning for my upcoming trip to the USA involves a number of short hops eastbound and a single PNR westbound.

Almost all of the routes I see Q N (and occasionally O) class fares. Except Arizona to DFW where S class is the universal bottom fare. TUS-DFW cost me $246. BWI-DFW-LAX less than $200.

Did I look too far in advance? Or are they trying to encourage purchase of A or P class fares because of a much smaller fare price differential?

Or is it - Because they can?

Happy wandering

Fred

reeg2

I've flown DFW-PHX-DFW 13 times this year. Mostly booking 5-10 days in advance - cheapest I've flown is $545 rt. Ugly.

AZ Travels the World

This will likely create some level of downward pricing pressure come Nov. 2:

Southwest lists 15 cities that will get nonstop service out of Dallas Love

It's not like it used to be with Southwest, but with PHX being a major hub for both US and WN, markets where they are head-to-head on non-stops tend to be more competitive than the typical historical market pricing on PHX-DFW.

freeupgrade

PHX-DFW has always been very high -even before the merger.

Having said that, the DFW AA Fare Scare is almost over. The stupid Wright Amendment (fully supported by AA lawyers , as it virtually stopped nonstop flying from Love Field by WN) finally expires October 13 (after years and years of AA lawsuits). I do expect some overall downward pressure on fares where AA will now have to compete directly with WN on some nonstops.

Anyone who has lived in DFW for more than a year knows exactly what I am referring to.

AlwaysAisle

Past 10 years I lived at Los Angeles, Houston, and then Cleveland. All locations Southwest has decent size presence. However, my feeling was that Southwest is no longer has a lot of effect in lowering fares, especially on advance purchase fares.

Southwest still has low full fare where at work purchasing tickets on last minutes do make difference. However, on my personal travels I hardly do last minute purchase and most of the time my personal travels are on advance purchase fares. Where I often found cheapest advance fares not on Southwest.

So I am wondering when Write Amendment finally go to the history at DAL (Dallas Love Field), how much that will influence AA’s advance purchase fares out of DFW?

DenverBrian

To or from PHX, try booking that segment on the US site instead of the AA site. It can be significantly cheaper on the US site.

wandering_fred

I'm traveling the end of September.

When I was seriously looking about a month ago, the AA fares were roughly the same from PHX or TUS. The latter saves me a two hour drive.

At the moment the AA flight is $20 more than I paid three weeks ago and is significantly cheaper (about $150) than Southwest Tuscon - Dallas looking at three weeks out. And my BWI-DFW-LAX flights are $10 less now.

When I looked at US flights, the only cheaper PHX-DFW flights were very early in the morning. They seem to have come down a bit on the mid day flights and the (PHX-DFW) code shares on AA metal are less than AA wants to charge, but not enough to warrant selection as I have plenty of 500mile certificates. And the bargains are all from PHX not TUS.

I remain to be convinced that the Southwest direct flights will change the fare pricing (after the initial promotions)

Happy wandering

Fred

oneworld82

The impact will be minimal - if any impact at all there will be. On certain routes where AA is the only obvious legacy choice, business travel is forced to book AA for nonstop routing. This gives AA a great pricing power (that other carriers enjoy in other routes). It's called supply and demand Ultimately, willingness to pay will dictate pricing.

3Cforme

Southwest gets lots of business travelers with competitive frequency in many markets. It's naive to think business travelers book only legacy carriers.

AZ Travels the World

Which is why AA has, for decades, thrown a MD-80 full of lawyers at fighting the repeal of the Wright Amendment?

Because its repeal will have 'minimal - if any' impact on pricing?

FWAAA

I completely agree if you look at short-haul, high-frequency markets like DAL-HOU or DAL-AUS or any of the Bay Area to/from SoCal airports. But on longer flights (2.5 to 4 hours), WN does not attract the same percentage of business travelers. From HOU, for instance, WN gets a smaller share of the traffic to distant cities than does UA from IAH. Not only does UA still carry the bigger share of the local traffic between IAH and those more distant cities - but UA is getting higher fares doing so. I realize that HOU-IAH is not exactly identical to DAL-DFW, but it's some evidence that WN doesn't always prevail.

I don't believe that WN will suddenly dominate the business travel between DAL and more distant cities, like SFO, LAX, NYC or BOS next month when WN will be able to fly nonstop.

On AA at DFW, frequent travelers will be assured of high frequencies plus assigned seats - in many cases, in first class or MCE. WN's fares are frequently as high or higher than the legacies. They have to be - as WN pays its employees higher wages (still has a slight labor cost advantage due to impressive productivity) and because WN refuses to charge for first or second checked bags. Bags don't actually fly free - WN simply refuses to itemize the bag charge on its ticket receipts.

A decade ago, WN was able to leverage its legendary fuel hedging successes into low, low fares that helped build some market share. Now, with more uncomfortable seating than the legacies and a convoluted system for selling more favorable A boarding passes (which don't guarantee a better seat), I predict that WN won't be filling lots of planes to distant cities at acceptably high fares from DAL.

The vocal proponents of the US-AA merger claimed that without the merger, AA's network was just too small and had far too many holes in it for AA to succeed in attracting and retaining all those valuable corporate contracts. If there was any truth to those claims, then the WN network, which flies to hundreds fewer destinations than does US+AA, is also too small to constitute a viable threat to the dominance of AA, DL or UA. WN carries more domestic passengers than any other, but none of the business travel across the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans. Show me a business traveler willing to fly WN to the gateway to connect to their long-haul international flight and I'll show you someone not long for the business world.

IMO, WN as a bright future carrying suits on its one hour or maybe two hour flights and a lot of backpackers/leisure travelers/infrequent flyers on all of its flights.