If there are 110 people on the airplane and not traveling together, there's a good chance they all paid a different price for the same privilege of going from A to B.

With that in mind, a few years ago I came across the attached "If Airlines Sold Paint" memo. I think I have shared it with some of you but Andy's email reminded me of it. Enjoy.

73, Rod W6ROD

At 01:20 AM 12/21/2006, Andy Oppel wrote:

It seems air travel gets harder and harder to book. There are more people flying these days, but all competing for the same number of seats. I usually fly American through Dallas when going to Hartford, especially in the winter. But something happened this time, and I couldn't get a decent return routing on Sunday. I did some searching on various websites, and found all the fares in the $350 range (even Southwest) and usually with either 3 flights to get home or routing through a city that is risky weather-wise in the winter. Then I found an amazing (and almost surreal) deal on Expedia: $264 round trip (and this is from Oakland, CA, not a red-eye, and only one change of planes in each direction).

Now the surreal part... the tickets are issued by US Airways using code share flight numbers. All four flights are on United or United Express. If you go to the US Airways web site, the flights aren't offered. If you go to United's web site, the fare on the same exact itinerary is $353. It defies logic, but I think I can explain why US Airways had so many financial woes... selling tickets at $90 under market prices and then not getting any part of the business doesn't appear very lucrative.

73,
Andy Oppel, N6AJO
Vice Director, Pacific Division
American Radio Relay League (ARRL)
The National Association for Amateur Radio

n6ajo@arrl.org
home: (510) 864-2299
cell: (510) 851-6214