Ticket Prices & Vegas

It's no secret that flights are more expensive this year than in the past. Have these prices affected your number of trips to Vegas?


Semi-rant:
I live in DC and watch these flights to Vegas like a hawk. Unfortunately, AA has learned that they have the best flight in town and don't need to lower their price... these flights have gone up 20-25% or much more in price (and people pay it). Last year, you could usually find a weekend or off-weekend (Th-Sat/Sat-Mon) flight for under $300. These days, it's hard to find a decent flight with acceptable times under $400. By this time last year, I had made three trips to Vegas and I made five by July. This year, I have made two trips and will only make three by July. I blame this entirely on the airlines... an increase in demand has been met by a decrease in supply, United/Frontier/Southwest have all lowered capacity.

At the same time, when I go home (another left coast city), they want me to pay $550-600 for a non-holiday weekend flight from Th-Sun. Screw the airlines, we should have let them go bankrupt and then laughed at them.

So take a cab.

I have gone 6 times this year already and the most I paid from the east coast was 251 round trip
And have gotten it as cheap as 74 each way

Quote: ahiromu

It's no secret that flights are more expensive this year than in the past. Have these prices affected your number of trips to Vegas?


Semi-rant:
I live in DC and watch these flights to Vegas like a hawk. Unfortunately, AA has learned that they have the best flight in town and don't need to lower their price... these flights have gone up 20-25% or much more in price (and people pay it). Last year, you could usually find a weekend or off-weekend (Th-Sat/Sat-Mon) flight for under $300. These days, it's hard to find a decent flight with acceptable times under $400. By this time last year, I had made three trips to Vegas and I made five by July. This year, I have made two trips and will only make three by July. I blame this entirely on the airlines... an increase in demand has been met by a decrease in supply, United/Frontier/Southwest have all lowered capacity.

At the same time, when I go home (another left coast city), they want me to pay $550-600 for a non-holiday weekend flight from Th-Sun. Screw the airlines, we should have let them go bankrupt and then laughed at them.

Odd. I live in Canada and the prices have stayed steady on flights to Vegas (or anywhere really) for the last 5 years. My flights to Vegas have actually gotten about 10% cheaper over the last year or so mostly from knowing Westjets secrets about when it is cheapest to go and come back.

Decreased capacity has really hurt. Frontier cancelled its one flight from Dulles and Southwest is running fewer flights on Thursdays and Saturdays from BWI.

And Vegas hotel room utilization is back up to 90%, up from 83% at the bottom of the recession. Airplanes are close to capacity these days.

Fuel prices are down which enables airplanes to operate with better margins and increases competition. Monopolies on routes keep prices high.

Fly out of Philly , just booked today for next week and only 104 each way

Philly is a cheap airport. Washington has always been expensive, sans BWI but even that is pricey now.

Cleveland, Ohio has four nonstop dailies to LAS. That's much more than is needed to meet demand. I've flown for $70 ROUND TRIP.

I have seen some low fares, same as Teddys. And those are great if your schedule is very, very flexible.

I have also seen higher fares like Ahiromu, especially on Southwest. It seems like SWA has conceded the low fare market to Frontier and Spirit. In general, SWA probably has nicer planes than the other two, but it seems like they have less direct flights than they used to, at least for the airports near me.

So I have been using Frontier and Spirit lately.

Just for giggles, I thought I would check to see what the fares would be if I booked my flights for the upcoming WoV 2016 Spring Fling trip today. I am already booked to fly Charlotte, NC (CLT) to LAS on Wednesday 4/13 and return on Tuesday 4/19.

The only (I think) airline with direct flights is USAir. They are currently offering round trip tickets for those dates at prices from $776 - $785. I didn't go far enough through the booking process to confirm whether that includes all taxes and fees. Numerous flights are available.

I lived in the Atlanta area for so many years that I became indoctrinated to flying Delta. From CLT, I cannot get direct flights to/from LAS, but there are multiple options for connection hubs. Round trip fares on those dates now range from $479 - $700+ per seat. For the exact route and flights I have already booked (westbound via ATL and eastbound via SLC), tickets are now available for $479. I paid 25,000 frequent-flier miles and $11.20 in taxes and fees per passenger when I booked the flights back in February. Current pricing has increased to 30,000 miles and the same fees.

My last 3 flights have been on spirit. I am not sure I could ever pay $250+ each way again for united or AA. They can keep all their frills and I will keep my $400 each for gambling.

Spirit is all we have left since Frontier ditched us and their return flights are all redeyes. Redeyes waste two days because you can't really enjoy the day you're leaving and you're a zombie the next day. I'm not asking for a perfect flight Spirit, just one that doesn't involve a redeye.

I've got $1300 left to spend on AA flights via some CC points, so I'm cushioned for the rest of the year. Hopefully we get into recession or something so prices go down. As a fed, I get to be an a-hole and think like that.

I am the opposite. I would prefer a red eye home. We are the opposite now. We have red eyes to vegas and early home. I guess in a way that is better but it ends up costing 2 extra hotel nights.

Thank you sir spam a lot.

I was shocked last Thursday. As kind of a last minute decision, I decided to fly in a buddy from Vegas to Detroit tonight (April 22).

I was worried that because it was such late notice, the plane ticket prices were going to be insanely high.

But I was able to book both outbound and inbound flights from LAS>DTW for $131 each way on Southwest. That's even less than I usually pay a couple months out. Maybe I've been doing this wrong for a while...