Insane flight pricing this summer to SAN
 

I've watched airfares incrementally increase to SAN over the past few years - typical with inflation, fuel pricing, etc.

But, holy hell, what is with AA and DCA/IAD-SAN this summer. Lowest fares on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday are $1500 round trip.

In coach.

Someone hit the wrong button on the fare listing this year?

These pricing glitches are not uncommon. Will probably be back to normal within a few days.

There's a $393 DCA-SAN-DCA fare in June that requires a spin on a Saturday night stay.

NF14USI5 WAS to SAN

Category 6: Minimum stay requirements
WHEN DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN IS SUN THEN TRAVEL FROM
LAST STOPOVER MUST COMMENCE NO EARLIER THAN THE FIRST FRI
AFTER DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN
OR - WHEN DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN IS MON THROUGH FRI
THEN TRAVEL FROM LAST STOPOVER MUST COMMENCE NO
EARLIER THAN THE FIRST SAT AFTER DEPARTURE FROM FARE
ORIGIN
OR - WHEN DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN IS SAT THEN TRAVEL
FROM LAST STOPOVER MUST COMMENCE NO EARLIER THAN THE
FIRST SUN AFTER DEPARTURE FROM FARE ORIGIN.

There have been glitches reported where the two one-way fares are less expensive than the round-trip fare. You may wish to look at that.

Heh. Looks like someone got the memo. Fares down to $550 again. Very very odd.

We have enough tourists in "America's Finest City." ;)

In other news SAN-DFW can be had for $65 r/t all-in.

Yeah, between the Zoners and the All-Star Game and Comic Con, its always a mess. As a native San Diegan, I always found it interesting to see the surge in folks in town on weekends and convention weeks.

Still remembering when they called T1 and T2 "east" terminal and "west" terminal.... Heck, I vaguely remember when there was no west terminal.

SAN is a relatively frequent destination for me (All of CA basically) and prices have gone up a lot compared to 2-3 years ago for the times I usually fly. Rare to find something below $500 r/t nowadays unless one flies Sat-Tues or the like.

Hmm, still looks to me like it's $1500+ for anything mid-week (departure and return between Monday and Friday). You can get a G fare for under $500 if you stay Sun - Fri. But any departure after Sunday requires that you stay until at least Saturday to get that G fare. You can keep mid-week trips under $500 by flying out of BWI instead.

PHX>< SAN
 

Try one way tickets at over $270 each on a hop between PHX-SAN. I know quite a few people who fry from SAN to almost anywhere and miss their connection in PHX;)

Yeah, back up. I'm not understanding this fare dynamic. I've done SAN every year (usually 3x annually) since I left for college 20+ years ago. I've never, ever seen pricing like this.

You can fly first class to LAX or SNA for less than what it costs to fly coach to SAN.

In fact, you can fly first class to SAN for less than coach to SAN (sample dates July 17-21). Again, I think it's pretty obvious that this isn't the intended, long-term price; the cheapest economy fares are refundable W, meaning all lower fare buckets have been zeroed out at the moment. If I were to engage in some wild speculation, I'd guess they're tinkering with the pricing model for discount coach on this route, and have zeroed out inventory as a safeguard against accidentally selling a bunch of tickets for $20 or something like that.

I wonder if they're holding SAN owing to the fact that the All Star game is the previous week in SAN.

If you are coming the week after the All Star game that should be ComicCon, which would explain it.

Looks like ComicCon is July 20-24
All Star Week is July 8-12

So it looks like you are trying to squeeze between them.

What AA is charging is ONLY for midweek travel. You can't do a Saturday return? It's not that not unusual for legacy airlines to have the Saturday provisions in the cheaper fare classes. They've been doing this for years as a way of targeting business flyers (particularly from hubs). With AA/US merger, DCA is now an AA hub. IAD is close enough that they are applying the same pricing. BWI is sufficiently far away, and has enough LCC competition, that it is treated differently and does not have the Saturday provisions.

So your options are either to fly out of BWI or return on a Saturday (or fly one of the LCC's like Frontier, Virgin, JetBlue, or Sun Country).