mkr

Hi davewang202,

I don't normally fly this route, but I checked this evening (right before I replied to your post) for flights leaving Sat. March 10 (if you could leave one day earlier) returning March 12 and continental.com shows $221 RT economy on a T fare for several direct flight times. You will save $79 compared to Southwest and can stay in a nice hotel near IAH on an inexpensive Saturday night rate. There is a 757-300 with 24 First Class seats leaving at 12:30 pm. As a 1 K you will have a good chance at the complimentary upgrade to First, since this will be under the new upgrade priority order, assuming everything goes as planned on the conversion date to the new system on March 3.

davewang202

Thanks for the suggestion, but there's a reason I made 1K last year.

I will be in Asia on March 10, and I land back in SFO on March 11. Can't take advantage of the flights leaving LAX on March 10. I happen to have friends in Houston, and I would've gladly flown in on Sat if I could.

mkr

That is too bad you cannot make the 10th. It is not clear to me from your post if you need to leave LAX on March 11 or 12 and when you need to return. You could buy a Southwest non-refundable ticket at the low fare and bank it in Southwest if you don't use it because you cancel your trip to Houston or later find the fare you want on CO (then will be UA).

I know that CO usually tries to match some of Southwest's fares, but that varies by market and I don't know if and when that would occur for LAX. It is about a 4 hour drive from AUSTIN to Houston if you wanted to fly there and rent a car to drive to Houston.

If you cannot drive from Austin to Houston, did you try multi-city booking with Austin as the first destination from LAX and connect in Austin to IAH, then return from IAH (or back through Austin)? You may be routed through Denver, but you would fly jets with First class cabins.

Good luck.

belfordrocks

There's a good reason for why Canada/Mexico are the favourites to get the new E135 flying... and because yields (and by extension, fares) are insane...

TWA Fan 1

I can only speak for EWR-YQB, a route I have been taking a few times a year for quite a few years.

The flights are usually fairly full, but most of the passengers are Quebeckers connecting in Newark, mostly to the Caribbean, Mexico, or Florida.

You can fly YQB-EWR-MCO for about $400 round trip, while the average EWR-YQB is far more expensive, since there is no competition for this specific segment.

CO does have competition on the Caribbean, Mexican and Florida routes (mainly from AC and WestJet), so that's why these fares are generally much more reasonable.

The point is, with the majority of passengers connecting in EWR and thus availing themselves of the cheaper fares, you have to wonder how high the yields truly are.

ijgordon

I don't know, but clearly the O/D passengers are subsidizing the connecting passengers. (Which is often the case).

IAHCOPLAT

davewang202,
It looks like the FT computer has a glitch and posts for another thread maybe got posted in yours. You ought to notify the moderators to correct this.

QBK

If you're referring to the posts about EWR-YQB flights, I think that thread-within-a-thread got started by post #11, and then diverged.

TWA Fan 1

There is no thread-within-a-thread, I was merely supporting the point--made by others before me--that O&D passengers at a fortress hub (e.g. IAH, EWR) will often pay an arm and a leg for economy class tickets.

My point was that if $1,264 seems unreasonable for LAX-IAH in Y how about $1,799 for EWR-YQB in an ERJ-145?

Again, that's just the nature of airline travel. And, as others have pointed out, there are almost always alternatives. The OP could book WN and I could have flown AC LGA-YUL-YQB, which would have saved me a bundle but would have been far less convenient.

QBK

Sorry, TWA Fan 1 -- I shouldn't have used that term. No derogatory implications intended! I agree that your post and the following ones were on topic (and that was the point of my post, albeit perhaps badly made). My point was that your post spawned several followups that (1) only quoted each other, and (2) made no reference to LAX or IAH. So the casual reader could easily get confused and wonder what on earth those posts -- e.g.

had to do with the OP. The answer, of course, is that EWR-YQB is a similar example of a crazy high fortress route fare.

Mustang1

Driving Austin to Houston on a Sunday would be 3 hours at most

nycboy

Why is it that noone complains when the fare is $126

davewang202

If the (one-way) LAX-AUS flight is composed of two segments, LAx-IAH and IAH-AUS, then perhaps the Sunday drive from Austin to Houston isn't strictly necessary.

FWIW, I ended up booking "United" flights that are USAir metal, flying through Phoenix. Another option was to fly the Sunday night redeye from LAX to IAH, which UA/CO priced quite reasonably.

fieldeng

I ran into this type of thing last year. I was going from TUL->YXT. Since all fligths to YXT are on Air Canada Jazz and thru YVR, I saw this type of oddball fortress hub pricing.

My full trip was TUL-DEN-YVR-YXT. Return was YXT-YVR-ORD-TUL. Pricing was set at $1557 for the entire trip. If I just flew to YVR, the flight was $450. That extra segment from YVR to YXT was adding $1,000 to the overall price.

I could have flown to Europe for half that flight price.