Why does it cost more to fly less ?
 

I am looking to book on Delta 8 Feb - 19 Feb JNB - ATL and the price is R11,630 / $1,464.63 but when i look at JNB - NYC on the exact same dates on Delta the price is R7,636 / $961,65. Can i book all the way to NYC and get off at Atlanta and on my return journey buy a cheap domestic ticket get to JFK for the return journey. Why would the Airline price tickets so oddly , is this common in USA?

Can't answer all your questions other than to invoke the absolutely unhelpful "market diktats" mumbo jumbo, but I can tell you that you don't want to book to NYC and hop off at Atlanta. Doing so would cause the rest of the itinerary to blow up and create a major headache for your return.

Others here will undoubtedly be able to explain the ticket fares.

Pricing is in principle based on supply and demand between the origin and final destination. Presumably there's more demand for JNB-ATL than JNB-NYC, so the latter costs less even though it involves a stop in ATL.

You CANNOT just skip the ATL-NYC leg; your entire itinerary will be cancelled. However, if a separate roundtrip between NYC-ATL costs less than $500, you could save money by buying two separate tickets like so: JNB-ATL-NYC (ticket 1), NYC-ATL (ticket 2), ATL-NYC (ticket 2), NYC-ATL-JNB (ticket 1). Weird, I know.

They charge whatever they can based on what people will pay.

It has nothing to do with distance, etc, it's whatever they can sell the seats for.

As others have said, as soon as you skip a segment, the rest of your trip will be cancelled

Cost more to fly less.. imo the convenience of arriving to a destination without having to hop through so many airports..

Some airlines charge more for more connections, because some flyers look to book for more points and status (MR)

It appears you're saying two things: airlines charge more to fly less, as well as charging more to fly more.

Win-win?

Name one case of this.

http://matrix.itasoftware.com/view/f...d-61878e9ce552

Here you are sir.

Unless i'm reading the accusation wrong, most of my travel out of DEN is cheaper to book direct. This makes total sense since the flights with connections are actually longer trips (although I wish it cost the same or less since I want to build up status on UA).

I suppose if you force a bunch of connections through multi-city booking, such that the connections don't fall within the cheapest ticket's allowed terms, the price could go up. But the idea that mileage runners are causing airlines to adjust their pricing policies is obviously bunk.

That's not quite right. It has to do with the lack of competition in ATL, whereas NYC (which is actually three airports, EWR, JFK and LGA) has more competition on the same routes. Do an FT search on the "Southwest Effect" for an example of how competition effects monopolized airport pricing.

Fair enough -- though lack of competition is often essentially the same as a supply restriction, albeit an artificial one.

UA
 

I don't mind to pay slightly more for the direct flight but in this case its a 50% premium for the direct flight. I'm also thinking Delta is taking allot of pax from SAA direct flight to JFK with that price . Anyways i will have fly UA codeshare via Frankfurt to Atlanta not fun but worth the saving.

That's all I'm saying. A poster above asserted that some airlines upcharge for multi-segment trips "because some flyers look to book for more points and status," and I challenged this poster to cite evidence. It's a completely baseless, made-up claim.

No it's not. UA has allowed 4 connections in each direction for a long time, before changing their routing rules to be less generous.

And it's probably 1 in 1000 people who is taking 4 connections in each direction.

Clearly there was a financial decision to condense routing rules. Unlikely that the MR outlier was the reason.