As an aside, I love travelling, but hate flying – in other words, I love getting to my destination, but I hate getting there – but I digress.
The airline industry is a strange industry and its one where the best bed-fellows can make the fiercest of competitors. Co-opetition is the order of the day. You compete with your partners on one route and partner with your competitors on another. It is also strange that one can book on say United.com, fly on an Air Canada plane and check in at a Lufthansa desk. Sheesh --- and what happened if the airline (which one) lost my baggage? Do I call United? Air Canada? Lufthansa? Luckily that’s never happened to me – I’ll blog about if/ when it does though.
But, today I uncovered an even bigger mystery ---I’ll contact Air Canada later, but since I have tweeted this a few minutes ago (@aircanada), I’m hopeful that some astute social media type over there will respond and enlighten me.
I’m going to Denver in a few weeks --- and on Air Canada’s website, here’s the least expensive ticket I could find. Taxes, fees, charges and surcharges excluded, its $598.00. Calculating the distance between Toronto’s Pearson Airport and Denver’s Airport, (round trip) is 8440 km. Doing the division, it works out that I’ll be paying 7.085c per kilometer. Cheap or expensive? You be the judge!
So, in a moment-I-had-spare, I pretended just for a second that instead of going to Denver, I was going on Air Canada to Beijing at the exact same time. Here’s the least expensive ticket I was able to find on Air Canada’s website
Can anyone tell me what gives as to why flying to Denver is 134% more expensive as it is flying to Beijing. Dunno about you – but I’d far prefer Beijing to Denver, especially in the winter months – and to boot - it’s only $391.60 more expensive.
Anyone want to join me in Beijing? Just let me know. Who knows – if there’s enough of us, we may even get a bulk discount --- and if anyone can tell me Air Canada’s rationale behind this seemingly non-sensical pricing strategy --- well, I’ll send you to Denver – seems to be a more valuable ticket.
7 comments:
it does seem very perplexing! However, Denver may be having its tourist season right now, and China its "off" season. My daycare's owner is now in China and told me prices peaked just before Christmas and dropped heavily right after. So I know the China flight prices fluctuate heavily. AZ
In this example I would guess that it has to do with the frequency of flights on the route you specified. This means there are probably more planes flying between Toronto and Beijing than there are between Toronto and Denver every day.
Also the size of the plane could have something to do with it as well. A larger plane may be more fuel efficient and require less staff through the checkin/in-flight service.
Regardless though, I agree that the prices on flights never seem to make all that much sense especially for short hauls. I've never understood why it is usually cheaper for me to fly to Miami or Fort Lauderdale then it is for say Montreal or New York at a lot of times of the year.
The only thing I can think of is The ol' supply and demand theory!
I'm guessing there are more people wanting to fly to Denver therefore they are able to charge relatively higher fares than flying to Beijing.
Hi John. Although it costs more per km to travel to Denver than to Beijing, here's a way to get to Beijing for the price of Denver. Take your flight to Denver, hitch-hike to San Francisco (the nearest port city), then stow-away on a cargo ship to Beijing. The last two legs of your journey should be quite enjoyable. No cramped seats, no airline food, no need to be subjected to strip-searches, no lost luggage. Give it some thought.
Hi John. Although it costs more per km to travel to Denver than to Beijing, here's a way to get to Beijing for the price of Denver. Take your flight to Denver, hitch-hike to San Francisco (the nearest port city), then stow-away on a cargo ship to Beijing. The last two legs of your journey should be quite enjoyable. No cramped seats, no airline food, no need to be subjected to strip-searches, no lost luggage. Give it some thought.
The cost to use the runway, airport terminal and to refuel in Beijing might be lower than in Denver.
I suspect the most expensive part of the flight is take off and landing (uses the most fuel). Cruising at 36,000 feet is probably relatively cheap. So it makes sense that a longer flight is cheaper per km. Would you expect a 2,000km flight to cost 2x a 1,000km flight? No! One check in, one flight cleaning, one baggage handling one take off and landing etc.
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