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.
Flying almost the entire way across the country and back DIRECTLY for about $400 is not expensive in my opinion.
I dare say that air travel is cheaper today in inflation adjusted dollars than it has been in decades past.
Try driving the distance and think about how much it would cost you in time, gas, wear and tear on your car and hotel stays.
Just the gas at $3.50 a gallon for 4000 miles at 30 MPG avg would cost you $466.67...
ATL is a hub for Southwest in the sense that Southwest acquired AirTran, which has always run a traditional hub at ATL. When people talk about Southwest de-hubbing ATL, they mean the ex-AirTran routes. Southwest has already agreed to sell a large portion of the ex-AirTran fleet to DL.
If you try to book a RDU-ATL on SWA, you will connect in Chicago. They are still operating as separate airlines at this point.
I stopped using Southwest as the prices were really getting high and I kept getting bumped out of my aisle seat for the family of three coming last on the plane (last b/c they had to get their McDonalds) and couldn't be split up.....happened three times in a row....
That's when you start pretending to be asleep once you get your seat Seriously though, anyone flying Southwest should know how their seat policy works. If you want to be together on that plane, you best check into that flight asap and have your butt at the gate waiting for boarding. You snooze you lose!
Hubs generally have higher pricing than non-hubs, due to the fact that they're so dominated by one carrier who can control the market. Southwest has helped change that a bit by gaining footholds in many of the hub airports of other airlines, but it's still true in many cases.
There is so much that goes into ticket pricing that your statement is just too general. In the end it comes down to competition. Being from the northeast, MHT and PWM were always the priciest airports to fly into/out of (non hubs). Of course that changed when Southwest came to MHT and JetBlue came to PWM.
Before I really started taking a liking to aviation, I always was puzzled at airline pricing. I booked RDU - BOS (connecting in CLT) for $98 one way. If I decided to take that same plane and just book RDU - CLT it would coust me $198 one way. So in the end, you can't generalize hub vs. non hub, layover vs. direct, it all comes down to competiton on city pairs.
That was definitely an equipment swap. The typical metal for ATL-RDU on DL is a MD-80. 75's are typically reserved for tcons, or at least flights longer than 3 hours.
(except the E175).
DL has changed its mind over the years. Some cities out of ATL such as JAX, FLL, and MCO are nearly all 75's these days. At one time ATL-RDU was nearly all 75's, then they went to a mix of MD's and 738's, now some 75's are back.
ATL, CVG, JFK are all hubs for Delta. LAX and MCO used to be, but were "de-hubbed." With the merger with NW, you're now seeing hub traffic thru DTW, MSP and MEM.
UA is DEN, ORD, LAX, IAD.
AA is DFW, MIA, JFK, BOS.
There are others, but those are the biggest. The legacy carriers route the largest percentage of traffic thru these hubs, then out again (frequently to those smaller cities where point-to-point doesn't make sense economically).
Southwest historically has focused more on point-to-point traffic...and yes, this still means a customer can buy a ticket NY-LA and will connect somewhere. It is just that Southwest isn't as concerned about keeping that traffic flowing thru key airports.
PS -- why am I not surprised there are so many aviation geeks who also read City-Data?
I grew up in the airline industry. My mother worked for a legacy carrier for 17 years. I worked for a different one for over 10 years. It becomes very addicting...even though I've been out of the industry for almost 6 years now, I still feel very much at home in airports (that is why they ask me to take off my shoes, right? )
I would go direct and pay the extra $$. If you do make a connection book it so that you have the most available options if a misconnect were to happen. So many things can "go wrong" on the day of travel that giving yourself only one or two shots is ludicrous with load factors they way they are these days.
Compared to Terminal C, Terminal A is like the Mogadishu of airport terminals. I still remember when there was a Terminal B with shag carpets on the wall lol
And I remember before there were terminal names, because "Terminal B" (the Southwest part) WAS the airport at RDU! No upstairs, either. The rest of Terminal A seemed humungous when it first opened, around '83!
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.
Seriously though, anyone flying Southwest should know how their seat policy works. If you want to be together on that plane, you best check into that flight asap and have your butt at the gate waiting for boarding. You snooze you lose!
)
