Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
hotair2, this is no help to you, but just for the sake of conversation, at one time there was a shuttle bus from Little Rock to Memphis airport because of the difference in cost of fare. As someone posted above, it appears they charge whatever they think they can get by with.
Memphis is usually cheaper than anywhere in Arkansas and usually cheaper than Tulsa, but it would take me the same amount of time to get there as it would to get to Dallas, which is even cheaper.
Not being close to a major airport really sucks. The closest major airports are Dallas and Memphis, both of which are 4 1/2 hours away.
I think this is an advantage to living in Little ROck over Fayetteville. It is cheaper to fly out of memphis than Tulsa.
This is something that I should have thought of before moving here. I have always been spoiled on cheap flights now I am stuck out here with expensive flights. Before moving here, I was never more than an hour away from a major airport. I can't begin to tell you how irritating this is.
I am going to either move or get a vehicle with video in it to prepare for some long drives.
Something I always thought was funny about flying out of XNA is that it's usually cheaper to connect to another airport instead of having a direct flight. If I want to go to Houston it's a direct flight that can cost $800. However, if I want to go to Austin then it could connect thru Houston but only cost $300.
I was wrong. Little Rock is O.K. NW Arkansas sucks to fly out of here.
I did some research. Here is what I found on average ticket prices. Little Rock is far better than Fayetteville.
Little Rock 366.61
Fayetteville AR 465.90
Fort Smith 461.47
On average, Little Rock is cheaper than Memphis. Memphis is the 5th most expensive in the nation, but they have a lot of direct flights.
Memphis 421.66
Little Rock is actually cheaper than Tulsa
Tulsa 370.04
So it looks like I was wrong on blaming all of Arkansas. It looks like it is primarily NW Arkansas that is sucks to fly out of, which is little help to me because that is where I live.
I knew that there were some pros and cons about moving to Arkansas, but one of the Cons that I failed to take into consideration was the cost to fly out of Arkansas. I have lived in Atlanta and Denver and I stupidly assumed that prices would be in line with those places. I say stupidly, because arkansas should not be in line because of the size of the airports.
However, I was shocked over the weekend with the cost of a flight to Atlanta. I needed to go to a funeral in Atlanta and looking on Expedia and Orbitz I found my flight was going to cost $1,000 to fly out of Fort Smith and take over 7 and 1/2 hours. I looked at Fayetteville and it was about the same price. I considered Tulsa and although it was a $150 cheaper that did not justify the time I would have to drive there since there would still be a connector flight required so the time would still be about 6 1/2 hours to fly, but then you would have to add another 5 hrs to drive there and back. Little Rock was $200 cheaper but then I had the same reason for not flying out of there as I did Tulsa.
I looked up flights from Dallas and Denver to Atlanta...$300. I just aggravates the crap out of me that I would have to pay three times more to fly out of Fayetteville or Fort Smith and it was not much better even if I drove for 2 1/2 hours.
Anyone have any ideas or thoughts on this subject.
I fly to Boston every 5 to 6 weeks and I noticed over the past couple of weeks a dramatic price hike at XNA. I have booked a ticket to Boston on the morning I was leaving and only paid $700.00 in the past and this time, I was trying to book a week in advance and the ticket was already priced at $1,200.00. Absolutely ridiculous! It was cheaper to fly out of Tulsa, but I gave in and used airline miles instead. I understand what you're saying and I agree! XNA is charges more for flights and flights have definitely gone up!!
I did some research. Here is what I found on average ticket prices. Little Rock is far better than Fayetteville.
Little Rock 366.61
Fayetteville AR 465.90
Fort Smith 461.47
On average, Little Rock is cheaper than Memphis. Memphis is the 5th most expensive in the nation, but they have a lot of direct flights.
Memphis 421.66
Little Rock is actually cheaper than Tulsa
Tulsa 370.04
So it looks like I was wrong on blaming all of Arkansas. It looks like it is primarily NW Arkansas that is sucks to fly out of, which is little help to me because that is where I live.
XNA is a new airport. Even though it's not new to us, in the scheme of airports in this country with its capacity, it's a new airport. Which is one of the reasons there is so little development around the airport. New airports always charge higher prices as the airlines try to recoup the costs of setting up new routes and so on. The airlines SAY that when those costs are recouped that the costs of flying will go down, but that's not the whole story. Because airlines also see how much profit they can maximize from those new routes, and they stick with the high prices and high profits as long as they can, pointing at how much they've invested, and their operating costs, and the increased costs of fuel and blah-blah-blah. Because of the heavy percentage of business travelers in and out of XNA, for whom the high cost is built into the cost of doing business, the airlines have discovered a high profit market. Travelers like yourself and me, who travel for personal reasons and pleasure, will either have to pony up the extra costs, or hook into other airports. When you have time to plan ahead, there are numerous ways to offset those extra costs. Exploiting specials, for instance, can get you to Denver quite cheaply out of XNA. But you have to be able and willing to book the flight while the special is in effect. I belong to several groups that e-mail me those specials. But it's work to keep up with them, and the specials are often inconvenient, with conditions about when you can fly.
I was excited when Southwest started flying out of Little Rock. But, as you say, Little Rock's not convenient for NWA. And the drive to Tulsa sure gets tedious...
Last year XNA prices started being very competitive with Tulsa. That doesn't seem to be the case this year. I wonder if the new terminal addition at XNA has anything to do with it. Seems like the plans I saw showed at least 8 new jet-bridge gates. If that's the case then this new addition will more than double what's existing.
Something I always thought was funny about flying out of XNA is that it's usually cheaper to connect to another airport instead of having a direct flight. If I want to go to Houston it's a direct flight that can cost $800. However, if I want to go to Austin then it could connect thru Houston but only cost $300.
That's something I found odd too. When I traveled for work they were nice enough to always book me direct, but if I were traveling on a budget, it's almost always cheaper to connect somewhere when flying out of XNA (unless you're flying Allegiant).
I have never priced flights out of Fort Smith because I never really think about them having commercial service, so I can't say I'm familiar with their prices, but XNA and LIT are about where you'd expect them to be price wise for airports their size. On a weekend trip (which tend to be the most expensive) looking three weeks out, it shows me $406 non-stop LIT to ATL roundtrip, and $489 for the same flight from XNA ($414 if you're willing to have a stop). Although certainly not cheap, that's not that bad for a regional or national airport.
Like you've said, I've found Little Rock to be among the best deals for a non-hub airport in this part of the country for most destinations. XNA is a little pricey, but I didn't consider it too bad for the size of the airport. I think part of the price difference might be that XNA tends to be mostly business instead of leisure travel (and aside from Allegiant, a vacation-focused airline, their destinations reflect that too) and the airlines know they don't have to be quite as price competitive there. Little Rock is probably a bit more of a mix of travelers due to the nature of the area being a little more economically diverse and being a bit larger, so I would guess that has at least something to do with the pricing being a little lower there.
Memphis is usually cheaper than anywhere in Arkansas and usually cheaper than Tulsa, but it would take me the same amount of time to get there as it would to get to Dallas, which is even cheaper.
Not being close to a major airport really sucks. The closest major airports are Dallas and Memphis, both of which are 4 1/2 hours away.
I think this is an advantage to living in Little ROck over Fayetteville. It is cheaper to fly out of memphis than Tulsa.
This is something that I should have thought of before moving here. I have always been spoiled on cheap flights now I am stuck out here with expensive flights. Before moving here, I was never more than an hour away from a major airport. I can't begin to tell you how irritating this is.
I am going to either move or get a vehicle with video in it to prepare for some long drives.
I'm going to pick on you a little for this one...
Every time someone says something like this, I roll my eyes and sigh. The extra money it costs to fly out of an area like NWA (or Little Rock, although their prices aren't as bad as you'd originally thought, as you later said) is normally much more than offset by whatever drew you to that area in the first place. Whether that be the quality of life, cost of living, or educational/employment opportunities, the extra thousand or two it might cost you a year to fly a few times is really very minor in the grand scheme of things. I do agree that the airlines screw XNA a bit on pricing because they know they can (which is frustrating if you're not working for a huge company that doesn't really care how much the ticket costs), but if the money for the flight is really that big of a deal, it's not that hard to get in the car and drive to a bigger airport (if the cost will offset it that much).
I'll give an example... a group I was a part of wanted to go to Miami a few years back, but round trip tickets out of XNA were very expensive. We looked at hub airports and we could fly out of STL for dirt cheap round trip, so we carpooled, split the gas for the drive to St. Louis, and flew out from there. Yeah, it was a 4.5-5hr drive, but it was something like $20 in gas a person and a savings of $350 a ticket roundtrip, so it was worth it for us. I still would much rather have been living in Fayetteville than St. Louis, so the once a year (or even a few times a year) minor inconvenience to drive somewhere cheap to fly out of, or the extra cash if I just needed to fly from XNA is not a big deal. As the area grows so will the airport, which will lead to more volume and lower prices, but it's simple economics that it's going to cost you more to fly out of smaller airports that don't do the constant massive volume of hub airports.
For perspective, I used to live in Mtn. Home, AR which was 3 hours from either Fayetteville or Little Rock, and about 4-5 from STL or Memphis, so I'm just happy I have the option to not have to drive somewhere else to fly out of. So the moral of the story is- suck it up, and think about how minor this inconvenience that you "can't begin to tell us how irritating" really is.
hotair2~It is expensive to fly out of XNA. Here to Atlanta is a very pricey ticket. Yes, there is a "grievance" fare. Although, I haven't found them to be discounted by much.
As I am constantly watching airfares (to/from Chicago, Orlando, Charleston, SC), a couple of websites are in my artillery--Airfarewatchdog.com, Farecompare.com, and ItaSoftware.com.
Airfarewatchdog.com allows me to set alerts for certain cities. Currently, I have it set to tell me the daily deals to/from XNA, TUL, LIT, and CHS. Sometimes the deals are computer glitches and you have to act fast.
Farecompare.com watches travel routes for me and notifies me when the price has gone up or down e.g. XNA to CHS.
ItaSoftware.com is my absolute favorite site. It is a search engine not a booking site. The site allows you to search your fares. Yesterday I searched XNA-CHS. Whoa! $495. Using the "modify search" function, I could have the engine check fares from other departing airports within 100 miles. Up popped a fare for ~$350 from FSM to CHS. Once I had the fare (it was on AA), I went over to AA's site and bought the ticket.
Recently, I've started assigning a value to my hourly time when I travel. By the time you add in drive time to the airport, wait time, layover time, and don't forget about parking fees and rental car, it can be cheaper to drive to your destination. Of course, now I'm going to have to adjust my spreadsheet for $3.50/gal gas!
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I was wrong. Little Rock is O.K. NW Arkansas sucks to fly out of here.
