Cost of Airfare on US! Boo!
 

Has anyone else noticed the extreme price hilkes on US? What's going on? It's not fuel as other carriers are not hiking prices. It's cheaper to fly international on other carriers then to travel domestic on US in some cases.

Could you provide some examples?

Are you referring to price increases or is this about the smaller # of deep discount seats available as capacity cuts force more people into higher fare buckets?

I've noticed on some routes the airfares change almost daily. On weekends, sometimes even Friday, the airfare goes up, then on Tuesday the fare comes back down again. I thought maybe it was lesiure travelers that tend to book on weekends driving the trend. Check the fare on Tuesday and see if its still higher than normal.

Yes I've noticed on fares to just about anywhere from Florida. Within 2-3 weeks they tend to equalize with the competition, but advance purchases are much higher.

Example of a few of my recent searches: FLL-SEA early June, Friday departure Sunday return, NON-redeye: UA = 373, US = 712.

Same criteria different weekend in June, FLL-LAX - UA 363, Spirit 168, US 533.

I've flown UA more in the past year. It's not so bad in coach. I have been able to score some decent UA codeshare fares on US metal - so check that out too.

I am paying about 15% more this year versus last year on the same routes, I would guess that this is mostly due to fuel prices being higher this year. I travel monthly from PHL to FAT, usually through PHX.

Don't buy them.

Bing cheaper to fly A destination than B destination is nearly meaningless. Airfares are only loosely correlated to distance.

Airlines are unfortunately showing some discipline on supply. High fuel costs have probably forced their hand...in previous post-recessionary periods, they'd rapidly add seats and compete aggressively for share of market. This time, everybody's being a little more conservative. So as the economy grows and overall demand grows, the leisure travelers are gradually squeezed off the plane. The airlines don't need to sell those $99 transcons to fill seats anymore.

In the domestic U.S. market, I think the shift in Southwest's corporate strategy has affected all other airlines as well. Following the past two U.S. recessions, WN was in hardcore growth mode - adding cities, adding flights, aggressively competing on price. Their rate of growth coming out of the '08-'09 recession was far slower, plus they'd established themselves as a national player with pricing power of their own. (Check their fares these days...they frequently command a premium over the legacies.)

Anyway, I don't notice higher fares specifically on US. Across the board, the cheap leisure fares are mostly gone. The walk-up fares are up sharply because WN has risen their Anytime fares so much, allowing legacies to follow them in a ton of markets. The midrange fares I tend to use for business travel actually haven't been too bad...maybe I've been lucky.

I used to consistently book all travel on Sat AM...just was convenient, quiet time for me to do so. But several times times flights came in so high I waited- and they were far less on Monday.

As I no longer do this, I am unsure if it is still the case...

What always amazes me is the cost out of CLT...especially CLT to PHL!

It still happens occasionally. US was selling PHL-LAX nonstop rt's for about $240 all-in in February.

That was a direct result of VX announcing PHL to LAX/SFO at ... wait for it ... the exact same price. :) $119 e/w

Personally, I'm glad VX is there to keep prices on that route down - I was paying min $450 r/t PHL to LAX last year.

I'm pretty sure US's price was less than VX's. US's was undercutting VX for a while!

(EDIT to add...)

Confirmed: See here.

So painful seeing the higher fares.

Once in a while, i'll see a decent fare (transcon eastbound departing midday saturday, but getting a decent fare back has always been tricky). However, i've had to adjust my expectations higher.

There are some decent first class domestic fares. Just poking around and saw PHL-LAS for $300ish each way. When coach is going for $200ish each way, it's pretty tempting just to pay for first.

CLT <=> SEA has jumped in price as well, not sure if that correlates to a seasonal change or not, but the flights used to be about $370 RT but if you don't do saturday over they're now over $700 RT! Going to Sat => Thursday drops the price into $4xx or so but it's still painful because they have a monopoly on that route (and the flights are always full -- as a Gold I've had 0/8 upgrades this year whereas as a silver last year I'd get the upgrades about 20% of the time).

also have similar feelings recently. last year, us airways are lower than others. this year, the other way around.
from SFO