Re: [MLUG - DISCUSSION] Cheap flights (Was: State Farm Stays)

[Jonathan King <EMAIL:PROTECTED>]

On Thu, 5 Feb 2004, Russell Horn wrote:

> > I suspected as much.  But let the record show that air connections
> > to Columbia do not tend to impressive outsiders, either.  (Yes,
> > we've had job candidates in our department and the {relative lack
> > of} airline service does come up a lot.)  The weirdness of it all
> > being that the de-hubbing of St. Louis might be a significant
> > long-term benefit to the Columbia air travel market.
> 
> Yes, I was about to comment! other than the problem with travel
> agents thinking you wish to run narcotics to south america,
> Columbia really isn't easy to get to. I usually fly to London,
> then to Chicago then to St Louis before the 2 hour Mo-Ex journey
> to Columbia.

Chicago - Columbia was a route that the second coming of Ozark Air 
ran (and ran well), but they started that business at the absolute 
worst time.  (Ozark then fled to Tulsa where they became "Great 
Plains" which itself is now in bankruptcy.)
 
> Add to that the high cost of internal flights in the US and
> Columbia seems even more remote. And to give you an example of
> flight costs n Europe - I can fly from Glasgow Prestwick to
> Brussels for $15 + Tax each way, or to Stockholm for $4 + Tax each
> way. With all our airport charges and taxes included that's a
> return flight to Stockholm for $40 - that's probably not far off
> flying St Louis - New York, but I've never seen a return flight
> between US cities for that sort of money.

Uh...I think you're missing some zeros here on these prices? :-)  
(Or is it really cheaper to fly to Stockholm than to drive to 
downtown London?)
 
> It's also worth noting that msot of our airlines offering those
> sort of fares - Ryanair, Easyjet etc are running with a healthy
> profit. Ryanair just lost a court battle because they were
> receiving subsidies from some airports, but even that isn't
> expected to push their fares up by more than 4 GBP.

I'm not sure why there would be such a price differential, except 
maybe something like there are more alternatives to flying as 
transportation within Europe than in the US.

jking


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