MisterBill

I'm flying to Amsterdam in August for a cruise, and ended up booking flights to/from Philadelphia instead of JFK or EWR because it was $200 cheaper out of PHL. I live an hour north of EWR, so PHL is out of the way for me, but not enough so that it's not worth driving to in order to save $400 for the two of us.

This isn't the first time I've noticed this pricing. We flew to Barcelona a few years ago and found the same thing (that time there were 4 of us so it was a no-brainer). This time, my flights go thru DTW so I will need to end up back in PHL, but the last time they went thru JFK (and we "missed" our connecting flight back to PHL and picked up a rental car at JFK). I will probably drive my own car to PHL and park at a hotel and get a sleep/park/fly package since it is cheaper than renting a car in both directions.

Anyway, what is it about PHL that causes the fares to be that much cheaper? Is it competition from US Air? I tried looking for fares out of BDL or ALB hoping they would also exhibit the same "cheaper than NYC" behavior but they weren't cheap. Or is what I am seeing not common and I just got lucky both times?

If there is a better place for this thread, please move it.

Nikolaos

I have 2 words for you; "demand & supply"!!

UAPremExecflyer

Your $400 "savings" evaporate pretty quickly: gas for the drive to and from PHL and hotel/parking package. That total: at least $180. Then your time: you have to leave much earlier, drive longer, stay in an hotel, fly backwards to DTW, connect (hopefully your inbound is on-time) and then fly longer to get to your cruise. And then do the same on the reverse. Sounds like you're adding at least 24 hours total journey time to the trip, as well as a connection. Not sure how you see $400 in "savings" here? If you value only your time at $10 an hour, you're already losing money.

nux

A few reasons:
They are different markets
Different competition, and may be competing with airlines that offer a direct service, and so a connecting service is less attractive and priced cheaper

CDTraveler

PHL is my home airport. For four years now I've been pricing TATL fares to various European cities, and JFK is almost always the lowest.

You lucked into random chance, not a consist pattern of lower fares.

nux

Were you looking at one airline/alliance, or all airlines when you did this? The OP may have been looking at one particular airline/alliance too.

CDTraveler

No, I use search tools like kayak.com, IATA Matrix, Expedia, etc. to see the largest possible range of airlines over a variety of dates.

MisterBill

Same for me. I was looking at NY/PHL-AMS on 8/9 or 8/10 and back on 8/24. From PHL the best I find is $1022. From NYC, $1200 and up. I booked thru the cruise line and they had a $957 fare, which I wasn't able to find on Kayak or anywhere else (and they were $1200+ from JFK/EWR).

MisterBill

First off, your numbers ignore the fact that it would cost me money to get to JFK/EWR as well.

I'm taking the day off when I fly out and it's not a big deal if I have to leave a few hours early. Coming back, I've decided that I will stay in a hotel in PHL that night because my flight only gets in at 7:30pm. But I can do that for $130 including being able to park my car at the hotel for the entire time. I generally rent a car (since I have Hertz on-site at the company I work for). If I went to JFK/EWR it would be around $60 each way; to PHL, $100. So staying overnight makes it cheaper than renting a car in each direction and I get the added bonus of not having to drive home when my body thinks it's midnight. Yes, I will get home later than if I was able to fly into EWR/JFK, but it's a weekend so I won't miss work, and the the cost (other than added mileage and tolls) will be comparable. I have a 1:15 drive to EWR (maybe a little less to JFK but higher tolls). PHL is 2:40. So it's not THAT much further. Extra mileage is 90 each way, so that's 6 gallons of gas = $20 since I can get cheap gas in NJ.

I was able to get a 2:49pm flight out of PHL which gets me to AMS at 8am, which is perfect since it gets me a full day there. I'm arriving 2 days before my cruise.

Obviously if I miss the DTW-AMS flight I am going to have problems, but none of the cheap fares out of JFK/EWR were direct, either.

You forgot the added bonus - more FF miles :-).

CDTraveler

It may be that in peak season, on your preferred dates, the cheaper fares from NY area airports were already sold out. I tend to start researching fares to AMS 4 to 6 months in advance, over a flexible date range, and while the occasional quirk or sale fare pops up, the trend strongly shows leaving from the NYC area is cheaper.

Guercifgal

PHL is also my home airport and we can never find flights to Europe that are cheaper than EWR or JFK. We went on a cruise last fall that left from AMS and ended in Barcelona; we flew Aer Lingus from JFK via Dublin round-trip because it was $400 cheaper than flying directly from PHL. Saving $800 (minus parking, gas and tolls) and flying JFK was worth it to us. You are very lucky.

M60_to_LGA

The operative words in the above: Aer Lingus. EI's fares are often freakishly low compared to their main competitors - I flew JFK-DUB with them last February for $420 r/t.

I would tend to think fares from NYC would be relatively lower than from PHL just because there's so much competition between JFK/EWR/LGA. By contrast, PHL is more of a captive market, as it's far enough from the NYC airports that most people won't want to make the schlep.

MisterBill

Yeah, well seeing as how I only booked the cruise on Tuesday (when the price dropped dramatically), I couldn't have bought the tickets earlier .

CDTraveler

I get those last minute cruise ads, too. Some of them are very tempting...

MisterBill

This wasn't quite last-minute, since it's for August. I don't want to think what I'd pay for really last minute airfare.

This week appeared to be the big week for cruise sales, I got several emails on Tuesday. I had been waiting for a cruise to Bermuda to drop in price so I could book it. Then this got so cheap that I couldn't resist ($1299 for an outside for 12 nights to Scandinavia/Russia on Celebrity). It's back up to $1699 today.

If I had booked the Bermuda cruise, I would have just driven the pier and I wouldn't be here talking about airfare.