Heh, in all fairness, the mountains around Riverside and San Bernardino provide some mighty fun driving for us Angelenos.

Have you looked at housing costs in the Inland Empire lately? Costs more than Chicago!

Have you looked at Delta's route map? (no offence intended, just humor) Many places they fly have more tats than teeth.

lol, that accounts for half my extended family...

Raging Waters is fun; Ted is an idiot!!!

Wow, Raging Waters is still around? I remember it when I lived in Southern California in the 80s and bugged my family to go once a year.

Is that the one in San Dimas where Bill and Ted left Napoleon? Hmmm, I wonder if the Teds are related? I got a serious sunburn there back in 1993...

Doesn't UA have a monopoly on SFO-ONT? There is actually competition on SFO-SNA (on AA) so you would think that SFO-ONT would be more than SFO-SNA.

I do, however, anecdotally agree that ONT is more of a leisure market than SNA. I know a lot of people with family near ONT, but I only have clients near SNA. My last one-way SFO-SNA cost my company almost $350.

Not if you count WN - WN flies OAK-ONT.

Both SFO and SNA are premium-priced airports. They lack the significant WN factor.

When I look to fly to either the Bay Area or SoCal, both SFO and SNA are consistently much higher in price. Obviously, there are those that are willing to pay the premium or don't have a choice.

Unless it was for a same day trip and someone else was paying, I would balk at paying 3x the cost to fly into SNA. It's a no brainer.

Right, but I'm only thinking of SFO-ONT. Does anyone other than UA fly this route? UA acts as if it can ignore OAK and SJC when setting SFO pricing (see all the threads about SFO-LAX/BUR/ONT/SAN/SNA being more expensive than SFO-SIN/NRT/BKK/PVG/LHR/FRA/MUC/just about anywhere else UA flies) and I don't think anyone else flies SFO-ONT.

If we do bring OAK into the mix, there is still more competition for Bay Area-SNA than there is for Bay Area-ONT. As Channa mentioned, both AS and WN fly OAK-SNA. Only WN flies OAK-ONT. Less competition should equal higher fares. Apparently, SNA can support the higher fares even with competition from AA, WN and AS.

Heck, UA didn't even resume flying this until about six months ago (when they initially scheduled it as a Ted route). That should be a telling sign of the demand and anticipated yields they foresaw on the route.

For the last couple of years, I haven't needed this information so don't know if it's still the case. One of the nice things pre-the-9/11 cutbacks which derailed SFO-ONT then was that the northern California to southern California fare rules often included ONT as a transfer point, which made it that much easier to work up intra-CA segment runs. E.g., you could do things like: SMF-SFO-SBA-LAX-ONT-SFO-SMF, etc., etc. I don't know whether the fare rules still allow these routes/transfer points. (I used to often sneak in SBA into ex-SMF or ex-SJC routings to SNA/ONT for little/no fare difference, but playing around tonight I couldn't find anything like that -- and Expedia's fare rules used to make it very easy to check but no longer....)

Lots of interesting thoughts on the thread about why the disparity, but it still seems very strange to me!

(I also remember back in my intra-California mileage/segment running days that SFO-LAX-SFO was virtually never a cheap ticket, and routings ex-SMF or ex-SJC or ex-OAK were substantially cheaper to LAX. Things change.)

I don't think the pricing on these routes are so much about competition, rather a reflection of the areas they serve.

Clearly, SNA serves a more desirable region than ONT. In addition, the people and businesses who fly this route, I'd guess, don't care that it costs $250...so from UA's perspective, "if it ain't broke, don't fix it."

SNA can command the prices it does because the alternative is LAX: rental car shuttles, longer lines, need to arrive earlier before flights, endure the 405 down to OC which is 45 minutes with NO traffic (rare occurrence).

My understanding was SNA is limited in terms of departures/arrivals due to noise restrictions in area (neighbors), and is the primary DISNEYLAND airport, thus UAL can price it high and people will pay it (the flights are almost always packed between SFO-SNA).

ONT was added back to United's routes from SFO for the "Palm Springs" season, as they hope people will fly into ONT then make the awful one hour drive to the Desert (as opposed to flying direct on Alaska into Palm Springs).

Before there was the SFO-ONT direct route, you had to do SFO-LAX-then a prop plane to ONT (which they often cancelled if not enough reservations). Many an SFO colleague of mine got stuck at LAX with no way to get to meetings in ONT when the connection was cancelled, as driving there would take FOREVER.

Basically there is no rhyme or reason for Nor Cal-So Cal fares......I can fly out of SFO or OAK, and I always check BOTH airports, as sometimes one is cheaper than the other, depending on your So Cal destination (and who can explain the BUR fares???).

Frontier has recently begun flying out of SFO.....so it seems like that may be helping out on SFO-LAX fares of late.....

PS......SNA is the best of all the So Cal aiports in my humble opinion (except for the overwhelming smell of McDonalds that permeates the United gates)