"No rhyme or reason to airfare variations"

Sunday, August 31, 2003 

No rhyme or reason to airfare variations 
Costs vary by when and how ticket bought 
By Anne Miller
The Albany (CA) Times Union


Take a seat on an airplane. 

Aisle seat 2A, for example, or maybe 29B. 

Same worn seat cushions, same scratched armrests, same in-flight magazines
in the pocket of the seat-back in front. Completely different price tags. 

One seat may, according to the mysteries of airline pricing, be worth $100
less than the seat next to it or $150 more than the one behind. 

"It's kind of crazy, you never know," said Bob Livingston, traveling one
weekend back home to San Antonio from Albany, N.Y., his girlfriend and three
boys in tow. 

An unscientific survey (me and my notebook, up and down the aisles) of two
recent flights to and from Albany International Airport via Continental
Airlines revealed that no two seats on a commercial jet are equal, at least
not in terms of money. 

Distance did not matter -- a 2,000-mile itinerary might cost little more
than a journey a few states away. 

The most costly tickets came from the industry leaders; the cheapest from an
online auction site. 

The differences highlighted the fact that travel is based on supply and
demand, with Web-savvy travelers reaping far bigger benefits than those who
rely on the old tried-and-not-so-true methods. 

Some experts also call the system the airlines use to determine prices --
which take into account the Internet, travel agents, times of day, times of
year and empty seats -- horribly outdated. 

"Across the board, the airline industry is really confusing like that," said
Amy Bohutinsky, a spokeswoman for Hotwire.com, an online travel company. 

Airline pricing is a long, complicated process that works best when
passengers are flexible, said Continental Airlines representative Julie
King. "It's all about managing inventory and supply and demand." 

Bob Lancaster, senior director of pricing for Continental, compared ticket
pricing to appliance shopping. "You just look at that like any product," he
said. "You go buy a TV one week at $300, and four weeks later it's $500." 

He said the Web has helped the industry, cutting out the middle man -- the
travel agent -- in many instances. 

So many factors affect pricing that one price will never fit all, Bohutinsky
said. 

To illustrate the point, I questioned fellow travelers as I jetted to San
Antonio for a four-day vacation. 

I flew south on Saturday, July 19, and returned Tuesday, July 22. Looking
for a cheap flight, I bought my ticket in June at Hotwire.com. 

It's a great service if you don't have a definite schedule to follow or any
preferences about airline. 

Hotwire allows customers to search for deals on specific dates. The Web site
shows the cheapest fare for the days and airports requested but does not
reveal departure times, the airline or the connecting airports until the
purchase is complete. The traveler has two hours in which to buy the ticket,
and if not, must wait 48 hours before trying the same search again. 

I spent a few days checking fares on the airline Web sites and other travel
sites such as Travelocity (travelocity.com) and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com)
before turning to Hotwire. The latter offered me a fare of $223, round-trip,
including taxes -- between $100 and $200 less than tickets offered
elsewhere. Fingers crossed, I typed in my credit card numbers. I feared
snagging a flight that left late Saturday and returned early Tuesday, giving
me little time to see friends in south Texas. 

I got lucky. The online-auction travel gods blessed me with a Continental
flight that left at 6:30 a.m. Saturday and landed in Texas at noon, via
Cleveland. My return trip departed at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday landed at 9:30 p.m.
in Albany, via Newark, N.J. I had plenty of time to spend with friends and
accommodate any potential delays on Tuesday night, since I had to work early
Wednesday morning. 

On the Cleveland-bound flight, my fellow travelers included a professional
saxophone player, who declined to give his name. He was headed home to Ohio
after a conference at Skidmore College. He paid $160, not including taxes,
on Travelocity around the beginning of March, for the round-trip. 

A student couple, Maria Fusco, from Grafton, N.Y., and Eric Johnson, from
New Paltz, N.Y., bought two tickets to Cleveland in early July on Orbitz for
$395, without taxes. Their individual tickets cost about what I paid to
travel 1,300 miles more. 

Harry and Debbie Stoops, an accountant and a clerk, paid $750 for both
tickets to Denver in late April. 

Karen Cleary and her 3-year-old-son Evan were headed home to Texas after a
weeklong visit with her sister in New Paltz, N.Y. Her ticket from Albany to
Austin, via Hotwire, cost $236 in late June. 

She lamented, though, having to wake up at 3 a.m. with a toddler to drive
more than an hour to the airport to catch her early flight. She found a
cheaper flight on Southwest after she had already bought on Hotwire. 

"We didn't time it so well," she said, adding that she would use Hotwire
again only if the savings were sizable. 

Bob Livingston paid $350 per ticket for each member of his entourage on
Expedia about a month before the flight -- more than $100 per ticket above
what I paid -- after spending several days searching for prices on Web
sites. 

Livingston, who manages a car dealership in San Antonio, asked what others
on the flight had paid and joked about getting fleeced. 

"I found them anywhere from $350 to $600-something on a couple of airlines,
" he said. He remained philosophical, though. 

"As long as they get us there in one piece, it's worth it," he said.


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