JTE458

Why does Delta not allow flights for cities that are within a few hours drive of the original airport? If I want to fly PBI-ATL-TPA or EYW or JAX why is that not allowed and an error message appears that there's no availability for this route?

And yes, I could book one way to ATL and one way to destination but that is almost always much more expensive then it should be.

Duke787

Looks like DL (and AA) has chosen not to file fares in this market hence the error message.

You could book end-to-end tickets if you really wanted to

xliioper

Would require publishing and maintaining fare filings for said routes as well fare bucket inventory (married segments) for the route. Not worth the time and effort for routes where there would be very little demand.

koreanair720

​​​​​​Just curious how I would do this? Looked into flying to EWR from DC recently but the dl website said it wasn't possible

Duke787

Believe you'd need a TA to do it at a minimum. Might be able to force it through an OTA as a multi-city purchase though I recall DL being funky with multi city end-to-end ticketing.

NoStressHere

Maybe they just do not want to deal with those routes?

TomMM

A couple of years ago I tried to book JAX-ATL-MIA. Could have done with a set of oneway tickets but it was just easier to book the non-stop AA flight.

croberts134

I had a good laugh at "much more expensive then it should be".

Sure, it might be more than you want to spend, but it's absolutely the amount of money that DL wants to charge you for the route. These are clearly markets that DL doesn't want to play in and since you'd be displacing two one-way local passengers that's what they charge you.

ATOBTTR

In whose mind? Airline ticket prices are driven by supply and demand, not what it cost to operate the aircraft from A to B. This is why you'll see fares to Europe and Asia that are far cheaper than what you'll see for a short hop domestically within the US. As an average, the fares will need to average out to cover the cost of operating the aircraft but an individual fare is not based on the aircraft operating costs. If instead of two one-ways for PBI-ATL and ATL-TPA you booked two one-ways to make PBI-ATL and ATL-LGA, you'd see similar results to your PBI-ATL/ATL-TPA multi-city construction. At that point it's two one-ways and it doesn't matter if the origin is just up the road from your original origin or over 1,000 miles away.

Also, as noted above, airlines have to publish their fares with the DOT. It's not worth it for the airline to publish fares for routes like this that they know few, if any, passengers will be flying such a route. The ROI simply isn't there. Instead, you can piece it together as two one-ways in a multi-city ticket if you truly desire to fly it but then you're paying two one-ways and DL will price it as such.

Often1

You can book it. Just use the multi-city tool. DCA-ATL-EWR. Best deal is about $907 and takes just under 8 hours. UA has 5 non-stops and takes about 40 minutes in the air (perhaps less).

As you can imagine, not going to be much demand for that kind of schedule vs. 45 minutes on UA and not appreciably more on Amtrak (considering city center to city center).

koreanair720

I ended up driving

Psyduck1

Parental approval is required.

xliioper

While you can book such connections on a single ticket, the connection has to be longer than 4 hours when there is no fare filing on the routing. In many cases, it will be cheaper to book on separate tickets as end-on-end fare combination requirements in cheaper fares will likely force you into a higher fare class when attempting to book on a single ticket. If the connection is less than 4 hours, you can only book such routings on separate tickets. The system will simply not allow you to combine the fares on a single ticket (no matter what the fare class).

Pianoman109876

xliioper

Have you considered it might have something to do with the fact there are non-stop LAN-DTW flights while there are no non-stop ALB-NYC flights. Likely a requisite for the through fare filings from LAN. Same for MBS-DTW and AZO-DTW. Meanwhile, no LAN-FNT, LAN-AZO, LAN-MBS, FNT-DTW, FNT-AZO, and FNT-MBS fare filings. Why? No non-stop flights and no demand.