I get the feeling the airlines have no idea how to price at the moment. I just bought domestic tickets for Nov and Dec. AA are offering outrageous fares and they ain't getting any business out of me. UA are offering the cheapest seats (inc Sunday evening!!) I have seen in years - in fact nearly the cheapest seats I have bought ever in this market in the past 15 years. The seat maps are pretty much totally open on both AA and UA. I suspect what we are seeing is at the extremes of (1) charge as high as one dare and hope that someone somewhere buys and (2) get any revenue one can to get money in the door at any low price. I doubt either philosophy is going to work. This whole situation is a shambles - maybe Exxon should be made to buy the airlines. More to the point I wonder if I should be burning up miles instead of buying seats given that my 1K and Exec Plat are in the bag for this year. Thoughts and experiences?

What route are you flying? I've noticed, for instance, that PS is way more expensive these days than JetBlue (and, if you site in Y, JetBlue is much nicer). I think this was not the case in the past.

Interesting -- on my routes, the UA fares are ridiculous, while AA and everybody else are more reasonable. I'm willing to pay 10% more to fly UA, but after that ... no.

Seems pretty simple, buy the low fares and burn miles for the expensive ones.

FTers have been trying to figure out IM for years - with no luck at all.

Don't bother trying to understand. You'll lose all your hair.

Oh, is that what happened?