Re:Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains
by baddox on Monday April 03, 2017 @02:04AM
(#14020890)
I'm still astonished that Southwest can pull that off. Or perhaps just more astonished at how long I used flight aggregators without realizing that Southwest flights will never show up. I suppose I always knew Southwest existed, I just must have figured that they didn't have any affordable flights for my routes. Turns out I live near two airports with a ton of Southwest flights, and most places I fly too have plenty of routes. I use them almost exclusively now.
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Re:Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains
by jdeibele on Monday April 03, 2017 @03:03AM
(#14021083)
I'm looking at Southwest to fly to John Wayne Airport (SNA) from Portland and I'm surprised that they are very expensive and take twice as long (because of having 1 stop) as their non-stop competitors like Alaska, JetBlue (LGB instead of SNA), etc.
On the other hand, I'm looking at Southwest because they have a lot of flights, they let me check 2 bags for free, and I can cancel the flight without penalty.
Re:Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains
by secabeen on Monday April 03, 2017 @04:23AM
(#14021330)
SNA is not Southwest's primary airport in LA. That's LAX. They fly out of the other LA area airports, but none have as many flights as LAX.
Re:Bargain Travel Sites May No Longer Be Bargains
by tyingq on Monday April 03, 2017 @08:04AM
(#14022130)
>I'm still astonished that Southwest can pull that off
The tradeoff is avoiding the per-booking GDS distribution fees. With their homegrown reservation system, they were able to fill their planes without paying GDS fees.
They did ink a deal with Amadeus to use their GDS, but did not announce that they would make the inventory available to outsiders. I assume that means they were able to negotiate around high fees.