title: Rational Pricing of Air Travel
category: transportation
content: |

    <p>There is no good way to get from the San Francisco Bay Area
    to Southern California (and vice-versa) during the autumn and
    winter holidays.  That being said...</p>

    <p>I was pleasantly surprised to find out that 
    <a href="http://www.southwest.com/">Southwest Airlines</a> 
    actually seems to have sane ticket prices.  I'm not talking sane as in
    cheap, but sane as in rational.  We'll discuss affordability later.</p>

    <p>I priced out a couple of holiday plans.  The first took two
    round trips: SJC-BUR and OAK-GEG; the second, a giant one-way
    loop: SJC-BUR-GEG-OAK.  All said and done, the prices were
    different by less than 1.5% (before taxes and fees).</p>

    <p>It's somewhat refreshing to see logical consistency (even
    if slightly imperfect) in business practice.  (I wish that the
    government I didn't elect would exercise similar principles...but
    that's another post.)</p>

    <p>I don't know how most airlines structure their fares.  All
    I know is that the rules are usually arcane.  I'm sure all the
    airlines are engaged in that "race to the bottom" to get the
    most customers, cutting corners wherever they can so they can
    make their fares more attractive.  But this only works so well.
    Air travel is inherently expensive, not just in terms of
    passenger-miles but overhead incurred by the airline and the
    customer.  (With my short-hop air travel habits, overhead is
    the real killer, not distance.)</p>

    <p>Perhaps airlines live in a state of denial: they really are
    poorly managed, their bottom lines are actually hurt by a drop
    in demand, and that fares are just too low at times.  That
    doesn't stop me from thinking that $180 is too much to pay for
    a round trip airline ticket that doesn't even get me out of the
    state.</p>