But I wanted to take a moment to ask TPI readers in the Cincinnati area why on Earth they put up with what's happening at the Greater Cincinnati-Northern Kentucky Airport.
We visited my wife's sister, who lives in Hebron, Ky., one exit past the airport on I-275. But we didn't fly through CVG. Nope, we flew from LAX to... Indianapolis.
Why would we do that? Because by flying to Indy, we saved more than $1,000 on tickets for the four of us. I priced round-trip airfare from LA to Cincy, as well as Indy, Dayton, Louisville, Lexington and Columbus -- and by flying to any one of those other destinations, we would have saved at least $250 a ticket versus flying into Cincinnati.
Why? Delta Airlines has a virtual monopoly at the Cincinnati airport, with no competition from Southwest or any other low-price carrier that keeps airfares honest at dozens of other major airports around the country. Here's how bad it is: Some of the flights to those other cities I priced were on Delta and connected through Cincinnati. That's right: I would have saved $1,000-plus by not getting off in Cincy and instead flying on to another city. (We flew on Delta and connected through Atlanta.)
I can't understand why stockholders at Proctor and Gamble or Macy's put up with this: The inflated airfares at the Cincinnati airport must be costing those Cincinnati-based companies millions of dollars a year in unnecessary operting costs. (Is someone getting a kickback from Delta?)
Anyway, I'd love to hear from area readers about their thoughts on this, as well as similar airport pricing anomalies that you have discovered.
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My lovely lady and I discovered an anomaly of our own. Short-hop flight, Portland, OR (PDX) to North Bend/Coos Bay, OR (OTH). We use this route to visit a small wildlife park on the Oregon coast. Takes barely an hour via a small prop-hopper (they don't need a jet on that route, and I'm not sure the runway at OTH is long enough to accommodate one in any case).
Flying this route from PDX, round-trip, is about $200 per person. Flying that same route but departing out of SeaTac (SEA) instead pretty much DOUBLES the fare to a little over $400. Essence Above, we could fly across the continent for that! If I had my pilot's license, it wouldn't even cost $200 for both of us round-trip via a single-engine Cessna!
In fact, the last time we did the trip, it was actually cheaper for us to drive 140 miles to the Portland airport to catch the flight.
AND, adding insult to injury, there is no direct flight from SEA. They simply stick you on a prop-hopper down to PDX, and have you connect to the flight going to OTH.
Go figure. And don't even get me started on the near-military security measures. Flying used to be fun -- about 15 years ago!
Happy travels.