DCtoSC

I recently moved and began commuting between DCA and CHS for work on a weekly basis. I had been purchasing tickets about 3-4 weeks in advance and they had been around $250 a piece. All of a sudden they are $450 for the same relative date and time with a three week advance purchase. I had noticed that the price was going up about 10 each successive week but the most recent one jumped $200. I have checked for future flights and the increase is still there and looks to be permanent. As a small business consultant, this is quite a cost to bear on a regular basis. I was wondering if anyone had any idea why the prices are going up so dramatically and if there are any strategies I should approach to deal with the problem.
Thank you.

jbird82

Interesting...I make the same commute weekly and my ticket has been $510 since the week after Thanksgiving. I did notice that the price has seemed to jump to $535 for the upcoming weeks. It sucks and there aren't any other direct flights from DCA. Heck, the 1 stop flights from DCA to CHS are pretty ridiculous across the board.

To answer your question, I don't know why the prices have gone up recently. Possibly the approaching Spring period is peak season for golfing and other tourism in the Charleston area. I'm just making assumptions here though.

BoeingBoy

Don't know if it's related, but US has the only non-stop service and the most convenient connections from a geographic standpoint.

UA only goes to IAD & connections through ORD.
AA only connections in MIA & DFW
CO only connections in IAH & EWR
DL/NW only connections in ATL, LGA, & DTW

Jim

iztok

Have you tried to do Saturday night stay? Take one way to CHS then start "round tripping" in the CHS-DCA way?

USFreak

I do the CHS-DCA trip sometimes but now I do CHS-IAD-RIC or CHS-CLT-RIC for a lot less money. Rental car rates are a lot cheaper as well at RIC so for my budget, I am happy to make the 90 minute drive north. THe non-stops to DCA are always full-i booked 33 days out one time and still got mugged.......IAD-CHS-Don't even try it unless you have a saturday night stay-it will make your $500 a drop in the bucket. Otherwise, make the quick drive south to RIC-fabulous airport! Also, BWI is a cheaper option if you are going to 1 stop out of DCA anyway.

ellinj

I too have noticed an uptick in faires from BOS/PVD-CHS I usually do weekend travel but what I used to be able to get for 280 or so is now close to 400. I have also noticed a reduction in flights from CHS->CLT which means more connections via DCA.

Not sure if the price increases are attributable to the departure of Airtran, (probably not on the DC-CHS but possibly on BOS/CHS). CHS seems to be an underserved market. My dream would be that Jetblue comes in offering nonstops BOS-CHS and IAD-CHS with perhaps a few connection options via JFK, similar to what they did in CLT. I could imagine that they could fill an E-190 on those routes especially if they offered competitive rates.

vincentvan

If you're fond of driving on both ends...cheap fares widely available with no Sat stay req. It's less than 2 hrs drive up to CHS.

RIC-SAV 3/16-3/18 $193ai

Edit: Another option is BWI-SAV same dates $225ai

DCtoSC

Thanks for the replies. i have actually been doing the DCA-CHS Friday to Monday instead of the reverse (CHS-DCA Monday-Friday). Identical flights but half as much until this last week. I have noticed that the flights are now more full, and the point about CLT flights being reduced is interesting. At the same time, my flight yesterday to DCA was on one of the larger Embraers which was significantly larger than the CRJs I have been on. Maybe they are doing more connections through DCA. I am just trying to stay smart on the flights so I can save as much money as possible. I had actually looked at the prepurchased flight packages like American and United have but there appears to be no similar program for USair.

BoeingBoy

I certainly don't know, but I guess it's possible that US had started making some preliminary schedule changes in anticipation of the slot swap deal with DL being approved.

Jim

jbird82

If you took the 820 AM flight, then it is indeed on the larger Embraer from DCA-CHS. It has been like this for some time however. The other DCA-CHS flights are on the smaller, 13 row planes.

crhptic

I've found CHS to be an expensive airport to fly in or out, for the most part. I agree that it's underserved. In the last year I have actually found that the cheapest way to fly to South Carolina is to do BWI-CLT and then drive to wherever my final destination is - there isn't anywhere in SC that's more than about 3 hours from CLT. The competition from Jetblue and Airtran has finally driven fares at CLT down to a more reasonable level, at least to cities those carriers serve. (CLT-BWI is usually $140-$150 all in if you book in advance).

Aside from the other theories mentioned, I've found that there's generally a seasonal component that kicks in around now. (Not specific to the DCA-CHS route, but just in general). Between Christmas and the March spring break dates is generally a very low season in air travel; fares tend to go up in spring, take a small dip between spring break and the end of school, and then stay high all summer. This is certainly the case on routes I have flown regularly for the past couple of years (DC to Colorado mainly) so I could imagine it's true on other routes out of DC as well.

USFreak

You all raise very valid points so allow me to elaborate on the happenings in our fair city of CHS.

Two weeks ago, we kicked off our tourist season with the Southeastern Wildlife Expo. March and April are completely booked on the weekends with events so my guess is that you will not see a decrease in fares any time soon. I work for a college and spring break is next week so the next TWO weeks will be full in and out.

The departure of Airtran has doubled our airfares. My biz trip are 40-60% more and if you have to fly mid week with no weekend return, OMG, you will pay through the nose (CHS-LGA has been running around $1200 for midweek, or so the newspaper says). The FL departure was a bitter fight in my opinion. FL says that too many people bought the $39 fares that they were offering. My response: why the hell did you offer that many? The real issue is that our idiot airport authority board refused to renew the subsidies to keep FL. The month after they voted not to renew was when FL moved out.

I am privy to some information that a new carrier is likely to announce air service to CHS in the coming months. With CHS landing a HUGE Boeing deal, you can expect carriers to jump on that bandwagon real quick. What doesn't help us is that we have a significant federal government and military presence in CHS and with the government booking full Y tix all the time, why would the airlines lower the prices? Overall, this fare increase is about 50% lower than what it was when fuel was $4 a gallon and Independence Air going under. I remember CHS-SFO was over $700 for a 7 night stay including a Saturday......I have been booking UA E-fares the past few weeks so if you can do a Sat-Mon or Sat-Tues type of thing, you can do it from $100-$150 all in.

ellinj

I have thought about doing this It certainly doesn't add much time considering I usually have to do a connection from PVD, but the fact that I would need to rent a car in CLT to get to CHS negates all savings.

ellinj

Interesting, this would have to be an existing LCC, likely B6 or WN. B6 seems a likely candidate if you are talking about service to SEA as they already fly SEA to JFK. They could easily offer connecting service via JFK. I wonder how Boeing employees would like to fly on an Airbus/Embrear.

crhptic

True if you wouldn't have to rent a car in CHS. I have to rent a car wherever I go, so the cheaper flight still saves me money.