Mar 19, 2008
Flying on the right days of the week will keep your airfare costs low
Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday are the cheapest days of the week in which to fly within the United States. That bit of wisdom was contained in a statement by Rick Seaney, president of FareCompare.com (www.farecompare.com), commenting on the $50 increase in long-distance, roundtrip airfares announced last week by United Airlines and immediately duplicated by all the other big airlines.
The $50 is, of course, the major news. United announced it, and American, Continental, Delta, and US Airways quickly followed. With no improvement in air schedules or service, with reduced capacity all over the country (fewer flights to fewer airports), with delays at an historic peak, the airlines have nonetheless decided that the demand for air transportation is so great as to enable them to adopt a policy of high fares.
This was "the most broad-based single domestic U.S. airfare increase since I began closely tracking airfares in 2002," says Seaney. And it is only a foretaste of what to expect if the Department of Transportation permits several large airlines to merge with each other -- as they are now negotiating to do -- and thus eliminate a large part of the competition in the skies.
So what are we, as consumers, to do? We have precious few alternatives. We have permitted the oil lobby to drastically reduce funding for Amtrak, cutting off what could have been a way to travel cheaply within the United States. And since there's a limit to how many people can travel by bus, the need becomes greater to reverse the slide in Amtrak and begin energetically to restore train transportation.
This means defeating, in the coming November elections, those members of Congress who do the oil industry's bidding by constantly seeking to cripple Amtrak.
Write and read comments about this post.
The $50 is, of course, the major news. United announced it, and American, Continental, Delta, and US Airways quickly followed. With no improvement in air schedules or service, with reduced capacity all over the country (fewer flights to fewer airports), with delays at an historic peak, the airlines have nonetheless decided that the demand for air transportation is so great as to enable them to adopt a policy of high fares.
This was "the most broad-based single domestic U.S. airfare increase since I began closely tracking airfares in 2002," says Seaney. And it is only a foretaste of what to expect if the Department of Transportation permits several large airlines to merge with each other -- as they are now negotiating to do -- and thus eliminate a large part of the competition in the skies.
So what are we, as consumers, to do? We have precious few alternatives. We have permitted the oil lobby to drastically reduce funding for Amtrak, cutting off what could have been a way to travel cheaply within the United States. And since there's a limit to how many people can travel by bus, the need becomes greater to reverse the slide in Amtrak and begin energetically to restore train transportation.
This means defeating, in the coming November elections, those members of Congress who do the oil industry's bidding by constantly seeking to cripple Amtrak.
Write and read comments about this post.
Labels: airlines
Fifty years ago, 
Arthur Frommer is generally acknowledged to be the nation's foremost travel authority. He is the founder of the
